America’s president — heir to the world’s greatest document of freedom ever drawn up by man — strode across the hallowed grounds of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. With his hands clasped behind his back as a fuehrer surveying his troops or his kingdom, he told a gaggle of onlookers, “That’s the good thing about being president. I can do whatever I want.”

It may have been a lame attempt at despot humor, but it fell terribly flat and reveals a shocking unawareness of himself and what so many American people think of him. As if nobody in the White House grasps what a plague this president has been on our Constitution. He simply ignores laws he doesn’t like, rewrites others more to his liking, and shows complete disdain for the two branches of government designed precisely to keep the president in check.

It is easy to imagine Jefferson’s soul, which lurks around every doorway, in every boxwood bush at Monticello, weeping at President Obama’s words. But more likely, he chuckled — if mournfully. This always is how tyranny hatches, and nobody warned us of it more starkly than Jefferson.

Touring alongside Mr. Obama was French President Francios Hollande, who looks more like a dirty little man in a short trenchcoat than a president.

Oh my, how far we have fallen since Gen. George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette pulled off some of the most improbable battle victories in history to secure for mankind the first divine hope of freedom from millennia of murderous, cruel oppression.

As a politician, Washington carried out his duties with humility, respect, and devotion to the Constitution. Mr. Obama is a serial constitutional adulterer.

Mr. Hollande is simply an adulterer. Of sorts. He is so untrustworthy that he never even married the sad woman whom he successfully inseminated four times.

And then there is all this outrage from the media when the nasty little frog is caught hopping from one girlfriend’s sex lair to another’s all around the Elysee Palace. If only he had been married, none of them would have minded.

To this day, monuments remain to Marquis de Lafayette for his “unwavering loyalty” at Valley Forge, his brave gallantry in battle, and for brokering the French alliance to defeat the British crown.

Can you imagine the Marquis de Lafayette skulking around in a black motorcycle helmet between sex trysts to hide his shameful face? No, he preferred grand hats, tall with feathers — and he was worthy of them.

Tuesday night, the two presidents toasted each other’s greatness and engorged themselves on American caviar, quail eggs, oysters, and dry-aged beef rib-eye. What did you eat last night? Did you have cake?

Down Pennsylvania Avenue, meanwhile, Congress scurried about trying to squeeze even greater morbid debt out of us debt-sodden taxpayers. No, $17 trillion in immoral and unconscionable debt heaped upon our children and grandchildren is not enough for them. And merely suggesting that these Ponzi artists stop spending our money and start cutting their government will get you branded a reckless lunatic.

Wonder what Gen. Washington and the Marquis would say about that?

In the vicious Valley Forge winter of 1777, Washington and Lafayette bravely led the barefoot, sick, and starving men who suffered, fought, and died for the country and Constitution we inherited. All that misery they suffered so future generations might reap freedom and prosperity.

But today, here in this city, under this leadership, all has been reversed. They reap today all the freedom and prosperity they can conjure up while sowing the seeds of untold misery for future generations.

Follow Charles Hurt on Twitter @charleshurt.