What scares me most about Barack Obama is the narcissism/megalomania. It’s a consistent theme throughout his life with which I (first introduction of the “I” word) could bore you to death. But it jumped out at me this morning again from the top of the Drudge Report – “Obama Says We’re Out of Money”. Quoth the President:
Well, you know – look we are trying to help an auto industry that is going through a combination of bad decision making over many years and an unprecedented crisis or at least a crisis we haven’t seen since the 1930’s. And you know the economy is going to bounce back and we want to get out of the business of helping auto companies as quickly as we can. I have got more enough to do without that. In the same way that I want to get out of the business of helping banks, but we have to make some strategic decisions about strategic industries…
It’s I…I…I… Wouldn’t it be more reasonable, simpler, to say “The government shouldn’t be in the business of helping banks, auto companies, etc.”?
This relates directly to Obama’s views on torture, Gitmo and the like. Everything is preening, being seen as good; nothing is reality. Jack Goldsmith, writing in a much remarked upon article in TNR, sees this as a positive. Say one thing – do another. You can do what you want as long as they like us. Goldsmith’s argument is that Obama will do the same things as Bush, but under “friendlier” (therefore better received) packaging. I am not so sure. Too often the narcissist is convinced of his own words. I have frequently seen this with actors. And Obama does remind me of that old joke about actors during interviews – “Well, enough about me… What do you think about me?”
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32 Comments
1. Salt Lick:Too often the narcissist is convinced of his own words.
This is a huge problem. What happens when the narcissist’s plans are frustrated by reality? Has anyone every heard Jimmy Carter admit that some of his policies were misguided?
May 23, 2009 - 8:26 am 2. Ralph Woods:I am afraid that this current Obama enterprise of remaking America and the world will end up as badly as his community organizing efforts. Lots of money spent with no improvements and most likely severe damage done. . The only thing he is good at running is political campaigns and that is only because almost the entire MSM pulled the weight.
May 23, 2009 - 9:02 am 3. cubanbob:A year from now who will admit to having voted for him?
May 23, 2009 - 9:24 am 4. Insufficiently Sensitive:The only thing he is good at running is political campaigns and that is only because almost the entire MSM pulled the weight.
Exactly. Barak Obama and Cindy Sheehan were both media-created superstars, made for the purpose of bashing the Bush administration. Sheehan got thrown under the bus after her utility ran out, but Obama learned to run political rallies that Leni Riefenstahl would have envied. And indeed, Obama became so enthralled with his cheering weeping fainting crowds that he could easily believe that he himself was the end and purpose of all that adulation – acting as chief executive would be a pushover for such a giant as himself.
His inauguration speech was loaded with “I will not allow” this and that, and the lights began to go out for the rest of the taxpayers.
May 23, 2009 - 9:28 am 5. Steve Skubinna:There’s an element of narcissism among his supporters, too. Many voted for him so they could smugly bask in their own effulgent glory as truly enlightened beings, and simultaneously elevate themselves above America’s sordid (to them) reality and excoriate the rest of us.
For Obama and his cult, it’s a win-win. For the rest of us… it’s not going to be a fun ride.
May 23, 2009 - 9:40 am 6. David Thomson:“What scares me most about Barack Obama is the narcissism/megalomania.”
I have long been convinced that Barack Obama fits the clinical definition of a narcissist. It would be interesting to see how many credentialed professionals agree with me. I also strongly believe that he is subconsciously hostile towards white people. Much of his obvious hostility towards capitalism is its perception within the radical community that this economic system is a “white thing.”
May 23, 2009 - 9:53 am 7. Lightnin' Hopkins:Rich Lowry at NRO aptly referred to him as President Above-it-All, “bravely holding his flanks against straw men on all sides.”
Just a shred of humility would be a welcome change, but he honestly doesn’t appear to have it in him, no matter the situation. This is one of the few glaring liabilities in an otherwise sharp political skill-set, and could come back to haunt him when the going gets tough. This vulnerable aspect of his personality (such as it is in general) is ripe for exploitation by the opposition come 2012, when even some of the cultists will be getting sick of his routine.
Bill could teach him the lower lip-biting thing – that would help – but you just know Bubba has no intention of assisting in being outshined himself. It would appear that all of that talk of Dubya’s “hubris” might be chalked up to simple projection.
May 23, 2009 - 10:13 am 8. Insufficiently Sensitive:This is one of the few glaring liabilities in an otherwise sharp political skill-set, and could come back to haunt him when the going gets tough.
I suspect that the so-called sharp political skill-set is only functional when his lefty support group is active and the media is complicit. Both those items were true through his “community organizing” days and in the anti-Bush campaign.
Should the situation in the US degenerate into markedly worse economic times for productive wage-earners, and confusion in economic markets and foreign relations, some former media supporters will become actively critical. Then the ’sharp political skill-set’ will be tested for the first time, once he is forced to take some responsibility while facing a less than springtime-in-america electorate.
May 23, 2009 - 10:37 am 9. Anita Hope:A perfect example oF the “I” is right in our own back yard,the governor of Calif. , who said “I” will solve the problems this state is having. Look where the “I” has brought us to in California, and is not the saying “As California goes so goes the country”? Saw at a special screening last evening Terminator
May 23, 2009 - 10:50 am 10. Lightnin' Hopkins:Salvation and towards the end we were given a flash of our governor, again as # 4 states “adulation” is the key player in both these men, it is just more dangerous when the President is following in the exact footsteps of destructiun, if only his words were in line with his actions. His narcisstic behavior
is beyond even the best psychiatric help available because those closest to him will continue to feed his “I”. just as our governor is fed his, as exampled in the movie seen last night. For both these men from different political party’s, control is a word called, as Roger said above, “I” or another could be used in capital letters “ME”.
Have a good Holiday Weekend
Man alive, I.S., it’s just an observation, I’m not building him a monument over here.
For what its worth, the situation is guaranteed to degenerate and his smugness will backfire in a spectacular fashion.
May 23, 2009 - 11:09 am 11. Anita Hope:Sorry for my error, If only his actions were in line with his words.
May 23, 2009 - 11:17 am 12. John Moore:Many politicians are narcissists.
Most have learned to hide it.
Obama either has it worse than most (indeed a scary thing – Stalin and Saddam were malignant narcissists) or has never before been tested in a way that would teach him to hide it.
I think both are true.
May 23, 2009 - 12:08 pm 13. Promoguy:Anita, the governor is not a narcissist. He is unfortunately a total idiot.
May 23, 2009 - 12:55 pm 14. President Obama: ‘We’re Out of Money’ | Conservative Political Report:[...] Pajamas Media [...]
May 23, 2009 - 1:09 pm 15. Professor Guvinof:I forgot who deserves the credit (possibly Mark Shields?) for a humorous definition of the mirror: “A device frequently used by senators who wonder what the next president will look like”.
There is a line between being energized by a strong ego and being blinded by it. Recent history shows that refraining from crossing that line is very difficult for a junior politician like Barack Obama, and not quite so forbidding for a mature man like Ronald Reagan.
There is also a line between being humbled and being humiliated by unanticipated events. It will be better for all of us if our president gets to stay on the side of the former rather than the latter. How quickly can one learn prudence, and how painful does it need to be?
May 23, 2009 - 1:12 pm 16. glenn:“What scares me most about Barack Obama is the narcissism”….That’s been worring me about the entire Baby Boom generation for a number of years now.
May 23, 2009 - 3:05 pm 17. Insufficiently Sensitive:Lightnin’ Hopkins:
Man alive, I.S., it’s just an observation, I’m not building him a monument over here.
Sir, I am agreeing with you. And I too am eagerly awaiting the Backfiring of the Smugness – and hoping that he doesn’t attempt to cover it with blackshirt antics by ACORN.
PS – I’m also a big admirer of your namesake.
May 23, 2009 - 3:56 pm 18. Lightnin' Hopkins:I was mistaken I. S.; sorry about that. I assumed you thought I was giving Barry too much credit for his political acumen, it’s just how the words came out at the time.
I completely agree about ACORN — they cannot be exposed and countered enough before the next two elections. Someone in the new media needs to follow the slimey money trails branching out in all directions from this “most ethical” of administrations and document the chicanery so thoroughly even the MSM has to report it.
And oh yes, Samuel Hopkins was a helluva character and one fine guitar player, no doubt about it.
May 23, 2009 - 4:50 pm 19. California Dreamer:One wonders what little slip-up could cause the narcissist-in-chief’s approval ratings to begin to unravel. The “I must keep my blackberry” thing still bothers me since it isn’t clear that those messages are being archived and available for public information requests. There’s also the possibility of a Lewinsky moment since he often appears to feel like a rock star and might behave like one at some point on the road. I’m guessing the nose candy phase is over, but one cannot dismiss the good ole skim-a-bit-off-the-top or insider trading type of scandal. The “I”, “I”, “I” mindset will manifest itself somehow.
May 23, 2009 - 6:21 pm 20. Chris Bolts Sr.:Indeed, I noticed this about Obama as well. While bored at work, I decided to count the number of times Barack Obama says “I” compared to Dick Cheney. Barack Obama actually says “I” 101 times compared to 41 times by Dick Cheney.
May 23, 2009 - 9:25 pm 21. Roger L Simon:thanks for that, Chris. Great to be corroborated.
May 23, 2009 - 9:31 pm 22. Data Schlepper:True, Obama says “I” a lot.
May 24, 2009 - 5:35 am 23. Alex Bensky:Would you prefer he said “we”? If he did, maybe you would be complaining that he is exhibiting an unconscious tendency toward collectivism instead of narcissism.
Saying “I” is a technique of public speaking for personalizing the issue at hand. It is meant to attract your audience’s attention and get them to stop thinking about what they will be doing on Memorial Day.
I strongly recommend Dr. Sanity at:
http://drsanity.blogspot.com/
as interesting and informative on leftism as a psychological phenomenon as well as the pattern of behavior discussed above.
All we need to remember is that this is a man who thought that an appropriate gift for the head of state of our most important ally, the Queen of England, was an iPod with, of all things, recordings of his own speeches.
I can just imagine the msm reaction if Bush had done something like this…or referred to the language of Austria as “Austrian.”
May 24, 2009 - 8:29 am 24. Insufficiently Sensitive:True, Obama says “I” a lot. Would you prefer he said “we”? … Saying “I” is a technique of public speaking for personalizing the issue at hand.
It is also the ‘technique of public speaking’ used by banana-republic dictators to attract their audience’s attention and get them to stop thinking about how to change the government. And the imperial “we” is properly reserved to Queen Victoria.
As head of democratic government, President Obama is in a way representing all of us, and his incessant “I will” and “I will not” is just a bit too much like an authoritarian-in-waiting. Despite the royal treatment he receives from the MSM, he’s not the King, and he can well enough transact national business without incessant first-person verbiage.
His reactionary speech-scheduling on top of Vice President Cheney’s is crude partisan politics, unbecoming for a man who’s supposed to represent all of us, not just the Democratic party with a capital “I”.
May 24, 2009 - 9:26 am 25. aconservativeteacher:I agree. Did you catch his Memorial Day address? “This is an age” like no other, he said- he thinks that he is the Messiah and is going to end the current age and start a new one. He view of the world comes out everywhere, all the time, and I hope people begin to see the damage that a narcissistic megalomaniac does to a country.
May 26, 2009 - 5:48 am 26. Red S Tater:Folks,
Counts the we’s in the quote.
5 we’s, two I’s
May 26, 2009 - 9:36 am 27. jvill:Obama says “I” twice, but “we” five times.
So your point is…? Is this what criticism has descended to? Pop psychology disprovable on its face?
I do seem to recall recent President Bush constantly referring to “my government” and that didn’t seem to phase anyone. I’d call that odd if it wasn’t so boring and predictable.
I will say it is rather rich to watch the 80s “Me Generation” types get in a hissy fit over the state of the government “they” left for “us” to clean up…
May 26, 2009 - 11:22 am 28. jvill:Data Schlepper: True, Obama says “I” a lot.
Would you prefer he said “we”? If he did, maybe you would be complaining that he is exhibiting an unconscious tendency toward collectivism instead of narcissism.
I, uh, wait, no we, I mean us, no them… Bah, whatever.
I’m pretty sure that no matter what Obama says, the folks on this thread would find something wrong with whatever springs to mind.
“Oh my goodness! Did you see how many times he LOOKED TO HIS LEFT!! OMG! Get the pitchforks! He’s channeling Pol Pot!”
May 26, 2009 - 11:29 am 29. Vermont Woodchuck:jvill, preferably, he’s shut up.
May 27, 2009 - 3:55 am 30. Victor Erimita:I agree, but Bush did the same thing a lot. “I understand” this, and “I understand” that. I never saw Bush as a narcissist, but his excessive use of the first person in his poplicy statements was completely inappropriate, and in his case exacerbated, I think, the personal, visceral hatred of his enemies. It really grated.
In Obama’s case, his excessive personalization of issues has helped to create the personality cult that has grown around him. But I think it will also help to weaken him when (some) people discover that he is the Hollow Man.
May 28, 2009 - 3:51 pm 31. Bob Shannon:O’Bama referred a copy of the Koran owned by Thomas Jefferson.
“And when the first Muslim-American was recently elected to Congress, he took the oath to defend our Constitution using the same Holy Koran that one of our Founding Fathers – Thomas Jefferson – kept in his personal library”. From this statement one can infer that Jefferson that was favorably disposed towards the Koran, and perhaps considered it “holy”. In fact, he read it to prepare for war against Muslims pirates.
http://www.khouse.org/articles/2007/691/
Jun 4, 2009 - 10:08 am 32. TBogg » I, Old Man Shooting Blanks:[...] then, we get this: Obama and “I” [...]
Oct 14, 2009 - 11:42 pm