The New York Times Discovered Obama’s Narcissism
By
Victor Lundquist |
June 3, 2012 - 3:40 PM | 1,791 views
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The New York Times today published a scathing rebuke of President Barack Obama.
A close friend of mine sent me an email this week with writings of a Dr.
Sam Vaknin, author of "Malignant Self Love" -- his "Dr." title derives from a doctorate in philosophy. His writings, and those of
Ali Sina, deal in part with narcissism and Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). Their assertions that Barack Obama is a narcissist are compelling, especially after understanding the examples provided of major historical figures who were narcissists (fascinating to me is the fact that narcissists often lie and do so with impunity). While these writings on narcissism seem to align perfectly with the man, Barack Obama, they are not central to this post.
Source: Fred R. Conrad, NYT
These writings came to mind today upon reading the Op-Ed by Maureen Dowd in the New York Times. The title she chose for this piece is
Dreaming of a Superhero. Much of what she writes here seems to derive from the descriptions of narcissism as provided by the above cited authors Vaknin and Sina. The entire NYT article is worth the read and an indictment of the president.
The beginning of Dowd's editorial recaps much of the political news for Obama and Romney over the last week and month of May, such as Clinton's Bain "sterling" comments, etc. She continues,
The president who started off with such dazzle now seems incapable of stimulating either the economy or the voters. His campaign is offering Obama 2012 car magnets for a donation of $10; cat collars reading “I Meow for Michelle” for $12; an Obama grill spatula for $40, and discounted hoodies and T-shirts. How the mighty have fallen.
Once glowing, his press is now burning. “To a very real degree, 2008’s candidate of hope stands poised to become 2012’s candidate of fear,” John Heilemann wrote in New York magazine, noting that because Obama feels he can’t run on his record, his campaign will resort to nuking Romney.
In his new book, “A Nation of Wusses,” the Democrat Ed Rendell, the former governor of Pennsylvania, wonders how “the best communicator in campaign history” lost his touch.
The legendary speaker who drew campaign crowds in the tens of thousands and inspired a dispirited nation ended up nonchalantly delegating to a pork-happy Congress, disdaining the bully pulpit, neglecting to do any L.B.J.-style grunt work with Congress and the American public, and ceding control of his narrative.
Vaknin wrote this of Mr. Obama in 2008:
If an issue raised in the Senate does not help Obama in one way or another, he has no interest in it. The "present" vote is a safe vote. No one can criticize him if things go wrong. Those issues are unworthy by their very nature because they are not about him.
Dowd published this about Mr. Obama today:
As president, Obama has never felt the need to explain or sell his signature pieces of legislation — the stimulus and health care bills — or stanch the flow of false information from the other side.
She continues,
“The administration lost the communications war with disastrous consequences that played out on Election Day 2010,” Rendell writes, and Obama never got credit for the two pieces of legislation where he reached for greatness.
The president had lofty dreams of playing the great convener and conciliator.
Dowd goes on to quote third party authors and those that knew the younger Barack Obama.
Obama’s boss at his community organizing job in Chicago, Jerry Kellman, observed: “He was not unwilling to take risks, but was just this strange combination of someone who would have to weigh everything to death, and then take a dramatic risk at the end. He was reluctant to do confrontation, to push the other side because it might blow up — and it might. But one thing Alinsky did understand was that within reason, once something blows up, to a certain degree it doesn’t hurt, it helps.”
There is so much coming out now about the younger Barack Obama that would have been really nice to know in 2007 and 2008. For instance, she describes what appears to be a fascinating journey that never ends for Mr. Obama:
Maraniss’s book depicts Obama on an intense odyssey of self-discovery, moving toward defining himself less as a half-white man with white girlfriends than as a black man who wanted to be part of a black community.
His New York girlfriend, Genevieve Cook, told Maraniss that Obama confessed to her that “he felt like an impostor. Because he was so white. There was hardly a black bone in his body.” When she predicted that his future might be with a black woman — “That lithe, bubbly, strong black lady is waiting somewhere!” she wrote in her journal — he told her “he doubted there were any black women he would feel truly comfortable with. I would tell him, ‘No, she is out there.’ ”
He wanted to get out of the corporate world he found so distasteful — he described himself as “a spy behind enemy lines” — and reimagine himself as a politician.
As you consider what I wrote at the very beginning about Barack Obama being a narcissist, consider what Maureen Dowd wrote at the end of her Op-Ed. Do we really want a president that is self absorbed with some grandiose view of himself? By the way, her mention below of childhood abuse is cited often by clinicians as present in many narcissists. Dowd finishes her editorial here:
The Superhero
As Maraniss recounts, Obama said he liked reading Hemingway because of Papa’s “integrity of grasping for those times, those visions, that are ones of true magnificence and profundity.”
Cook told Maraniss that she thought Obama’s desire to “play out a superhero life” was “a very strong archetype in his personality.”
But superheroes and mythic figures must boldly lead. Obama’s caution — ingrained from a life of being deserted by his father and sometimes his mother, and of being, as he wrote to another girlfriend, “caught without a class, a structure, or tradition to support me” — has restrained him at times.
In some ways, he’s still finding himself, too absorbed to see what’s not working. But the White House is a very hard place to go on a vision quest, especially with a storm brewing.
We need a president that is self confident, not self absorbed. It is time we replace Mr. Barack Obama (who is still finding himself) with Mitt Romney who found himself at age 20 and who has been a doer ever since! We need a doer, not a wanderer. We need execution -- not dreaming."A cult of personality or personality cult arises when a country's leader uses mass media to create a heroic public image through unquestioning flattery and praise. Cults of personality are often found in dictatorships but can be found in some democracies.
"A cult of personality is similar to general hero worship except that it is created specifically for political leaders. However, the term may be applied by analogy to refer to adulation of non-political leaders."
~ Wikipedia
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