I don’t think I’ve ever seen a White House view our country in a more unexceptional manner or act more presumptuous about the perfection of its ideas. That whole democracy thing? Don’t worry; Barack Obama’s working on perfecting it.

NSC senior director Mike McFaul said on a conference call with reporters Sunday. “Both presidents agreed that you don’t ever reach democracy; you always have to work at it. And in particular, President Obama reminded his Kazakh counterpart that we, too, are working to improve our democracy.”

Kazakhstan, incidentally, is recognized as a human rights violator by the US State Department. So McFaul is comparing imperfections in the United States to full-out human rights violations by the Kazakh government. A comparison he immediately denied ever making.

The Wall Street Journal’s Jonathan Weisman asked McFaul to clarify.

“You seemed to be suggesting there was some equivalence between their issues of democracy and the United States’ issues, when you said that President Obama assured him that we, too, are working on our democracy,” Weisman said. “Is there equivalence between the problems that President Nazarbayev is confronting and the state of democracy in the United States?”

“Absolutely not … There was no equivalence meant whatsoever,” McFaul said. “[Obama's] taken, I think, rather historic steps to improve our own democracy since coming to office here in the United States.“

Yes, Obama’s been doing wonders improving our centuries-old democracy. Damn good thing he showed up or we could never have basked in the glories that are his improvements to our system of government. All hail the messiah.

What exactly has Obama done to improve democracy, you ask? Well, he’s allowed black nationalist groups to get away with voter intimidation, pushed for the US Senate to override the age-old filibuster power, labeled dissenters racist, fired an Inspector General who was exposing corruption, and hired a Communist adviser who believes the federal government was responsible for 9/11.

So let’s take a few moments to thank this modern-day Thomas Jefferson for his hard work to improve our democracy. We Americans will be doing our own improving this November and in 2012.