Adjectives eventually attach themselves to presidents and often become nicknames and a ‘brand’ for an administration.

There was ‘Honest’ Abe, ‘Tricky’ Dick and of course ‘Slick’ Willie.

It is best to pick your own nickname rather than let others do it for you, as ‘Tricky’ Dick Nixon and ‘Slick’ Willie Clinton found out.

Richard Nixon would have preferred ‘RMN’, you know like ‘JFK’ and Bill Clinton liked ‘Bubba,’ but neither stuck.

Sometimes what sticks becomes the sum of your own character traits.  Take for example President Barack ‘You’re So Vein’ Obama who’s in our face every day since he took office to the point that we don’t know the difference between Barack the candidate and Barack the president.

The ‘First Guy’ and the ‘First Lady’ went to Copenhagen this past week to make a pitch for Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics – they were adored every where they went – but when it came to bringing home the bacon . . . it wasn’t even a pig.  The president humbly lamented, “Sometimes you can play a great game and still lose.”

Chicago came in last and was thrown out of the running on the first ballot, but they, Barack and Michelle, products of the ‘me’ generation, came in first in their presentations by mentioning themselves in their two speeches before the IOC 55 times.

Michelle out-did Barack 32 to 23.

There is no question that the world adores Obama, but sometimes I think they play with America as the young upstarts we are, Nuevo products of them, although we try to appear as something more sophisticated and more ‘old world’ than we are.

Obama was in office but a short time when he launched his world apology tours, making it clear that he was the president of ‘change’ and that what took place in the past – ignoring the positive, like saving Europe from two World Wars, while emphazing the negative – would not take place under his administration.

While adopting Bush policies, he tried to distance himself from Bush actions.  Obama apologized to France and Europe saying “there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive”; to the Muslim world he said, “We sometimes make mistakes.  We have not been perfect” ; he told the Summit Of Americas that he would launch a new chapter of engagement in his administration, “The United States will be willing to acknowledge past errors where those errors have been made” ; to the G-20 Summit of World Leaders he said “I would like to think that with my election and the early decisions that we’ve made, that you’re starting to see some restoration of America’s standing in the world” ; on the War on Terror, “Unfortunately, faced with an uncertain threat, our government made a series of hasty decisions . . . In other words, we went off course” ; a Guantanamo apology in France, “I don’t believe that there is a contradiction between our security and our values.  And when you start sacrificing your values, when you lose yourself, then over the long term that will make you less secure”; and to the Turkish Parliament, he said, “The United States is still working through some of our own darker periods in our history . . .Our country still struggles with the legacies of slavery and segregation, the past treatment of native Americans” ; to the Americas,”Too often, the United States has not pursued and sustained engagement with our neighbors.  We have been too easily distracted by other priorities, and have failed to see that our own progress is tied directly to progress through-out the Americas” ; on mistakes of the CIA, “So don’t be discouraged by what’s happened in the last few weeks.  Don’t be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we’ve made some mistakes,” and on Guantanamo again, “There is also no question that Guantanamo set back the moral authority that is America’s strongest currency in the world . . . Rather than keeping us safer, the prison at Guantanamo has weakened American national security.  It is a rallying cry for our enemies.”  Nevertheless, even with his self-imposed deadline for closing Gitmo, he has failed.

Despite all of these apologies, confessionals, and Hail Mary’s he has come up short with tangible policy benefits.

While foreign leaders flock to meet with him and feel better about him than his predecessor, his mea culpa nor his foreign policies haven’t done much to get what he wants.

Allies have rebuffed him on sending more troops to Afghanistan, the Saudis ignored requests for concessions to Israel, Israel rejected his demand to stop settlement expansion, North Korea defies him by testing nuclear weapons, Japan elected a party less friendly to the US, Cuba has done little to liberalize his relaxation of sanctions, India and China resist climate change, Russia rejected new sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program and Iran thumbs their nose at the US.

And while the world adores Obama, they effectively ignore him.

For years there has been speculation over who Carly Simon wrote, and made popular, the song, “You’re So Vain” about.  She has never revealed who it was – we know it wasn’t Obama — and some have speculated that it was James Taylor, her husband at the time it was written.  Others have speculated that it was a composite of many.

If it was a composite, Barack ‘You’re So Vain’ Obama fits the bill.