Obama uses a warped logic of federal noblesse oblige to dispense a bag full of goodies from tuition tax credits, to a mortgage refinancing credit, to public works projects.
Although he celebrated the idea of a functioning American aristocracy as a useful exemplar of industriousness and noblesse oblige, he spent his career lamenting that they had abdicated their responsibilities.
Only somebody intently attuned to the lives of the parents and their suffering would have understood that the Special Olympics was not just a classical act of noblesse oblige, handing something down patronizingly to the suffering poor, but of self-help as well.