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Barack Obama is a narcissist of the worst kind
By Joy Tiz Sunday, January 24, 2010
“The beauty of being a narcissist is that even when disaster stares you in the face, you feel neither doubt nor remorse.”
-Carl Vogel, “A Field Guide to Narcissism”
Telegraph reporter Stephanie Gutmann describes her reaction to Barack Obama’s appearance in Berlin: “After it was over I picked up the phone and called a friend back home. ‘It’s worse than we thought,’ I told him. ‘The guy’s actually crazy.’”
Guttman was talking about candidate Obama’s agenda as he presented it that day, in which he promised to take on the terrorists in Afghanistan, take on the drug dealers, rebuild Afghanistan, eliminate the building nuclear threat, secure all loose nukes, decrease arsenals from another era, form a new global partnership that will end terror networks, redistribute wealth, save the planet, withdraw all troops from Iraq, keep the oceans from rising, end famine, and reduce carbon output.
Incredibly, there are Obamanutz among us who honestly don’t realize that Barack Obama is a narcissist of the worst kind. Most people erroneously presume that narcissism is something akin to egomania or an unusually high sense of self-esteem. The truth is the reverse. Narcissists suffer from self-loathing, not too much self-love.
It takes a bit of narcissism to wake up in the morning and think, “Hey, I really ought to be leader of the free world.” Coming to such a conclusion in the fourth grade is a bit bombastic. Having some narcissistic traits does not a narcissist make. However, according to the Encyclopedia of Mental Disorders (DSM IV-TR), grandiosity is the most important single trait in narcissism.
For all of the narcissist’s grandiosity, he is driven by a relentless need to pursue and maintain a source of narcissistic supply. A narcissist is at his most menacing when he perceives a threat to his perpetual supply of admiration and affirmation. No drama Obama showed early on the truculence typical of narcissists when they sense a threat to supply. The same president who remains steadfast in his willingness to meet with Iran’s barbarian in chief, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, bleats about imagined desecration by Fox News.
“The normal person is likely to welcome a moderate amount of attention - verbal and non-verbal - in the form of affirmation, approval, or admiration. Too much attention, though, is perceived as onerous and is avoided. Destructive and negative criticism is avoided altogether.”
“The narcissist, in contrast, is the mental equivalent of an alcoholic. He is insatiable. He directs his whole behaviour, in fact his life, to obtain these pleasurable titbits [sic] of attention. He embeds them in a coherent, completely biased, picture of himself. He uses them to regulates his labile sense of self-worth and self-esteem.“
To maintain a constant flow of narcissistic supply, he must project a confabulated version of himself as omnipotent, intelligent, or in some way superior.
“The narcissist then proceeds to harvest reactions to this projected image from family members, friends, co-workers, neighbours, business partners and from colleagues. If these - the adulation, admiration, attention, fear, respect, applause, affirmation - are not forthcoming, the narcissist demands them, or extorts them. Money, compliments, a favourable critique, an appearance in the media, a sexual conquest are all converted into the same currency in the narcissist’s mind.”
For the narcissist, nothing matters more than maintaining his supply. From Obama’s perspective, being chided by a cable news commentator really is a more pressing exigency than the possibility of Iran amassing nuclear weapons.
After twelve months of unabated blundering, the president just suffered an especially mortifying series of narcissistic injuries. The election of Scott Brown last week was a body blow to Obama. Time and again, his specialness has failed to translate into success for his fellow democrat candidates. Add to the Brown victory the recent Supreme Court decision to uphold free speech; a ruling that Obama says he is going to “fight”? Did this man actually go to law school at all?
“The narcissist is constantly on the lookout for slights. He is hypervigilant. He perceives every disagreement as criticism and every critical remark as complete and humiliating rejection - nothing short of a threat. Gradually, his mind turns into a chaotic battlefield of paranoia and ideas of reference.”
“Most narcissists react defensively. They become conspicuously indignant, aggressive, and cold. They detach emotionally for fear of yet another (narcissistic) injury. They devalue the person who made the disparaging remark, the critical comment, the unflattering observation, the innocuous joke at the narcissist’s expense.”
This time, the American people are the ones who must be devalued.
The pundit community is all atwitter. Will he or won’t he? Will Obama do a Clintonesque tack to the center following such harsh wallops to his ego and agenda?
No. He won’t. Not even if we assume Obama can find the center at all; nothing in his history suggests he is anything other than a radical socialist. There is virtually nothing to indicate that he knows or cares very much about the country he is supposed to lead.
Just a day after the dazzling and emblematic Brown victory in Massachusetts, Obama demonstrated how tenuous his hold on objective reality is. Rather than acknowledge the clarity of the message sent by the people in their rejection of his agenda, most particularly the monstrous health crimes legislation; a visibly choleric Obama postulated the preposterous and offensive theory that Americans simply don’t understand the genius of his plans. Hack sawing his friable connections to external reality, Obama came to the astonishing conclusion that what he must do now is make more speeches.
When Obama gives the State of the Union next week, anticipate the platitudinous gibberish we’ve come to loathe. Whoever loads the teleprompter twaddle will make sure it’s at least coherent. His demeanor and body language will be far more instructive than what he says. Obama is in the full grip of narcissistic rage. He is also prone to emotional leakage, which should get worse with as his ire escalates.
David Axelrod seems to be trying to pre-spin the image of a very damaged president by forewarning that we will be seeing a “feisty” president.
Thus, they turned to David Plouffe, his 2008 campaign manager who will increase his role in the Obama administration. Recall that after the Brown victory, Obama went back on the campaign trail in Ohio, looking and sounding dreadful. He promised twenty times to “fight” for America.
Plouffe has the onerous task of protecting democrats from Obama’s toxic touch. Plouffe has announced his winning strategy for democrats in November: “No bed-wetting.”
Obama is not fighting for America, his grand jeremiad is with the American people. He wasted no time after his Massachusetts loss to declare war against the banks. The current leader of the free world is not in touch with reality. The toady press keeps accepting his fabrications and denials. And mental health professionals have shown a remarkable lack of curiosity about the mental health of the President of the United States.
It’s not in the nation’s best interest to put a narcissist in the White House. Bill Clinton’s debauchery demonstrated his willingness to put his need for narcissistic supply ahead of the well-being of the country he was hired to serve. Clinton’s narcissism was manifestly less toxic than Barack Obama’s.
Clinton was able to take in new information and change direction because his narcissism is less pathological than Obama’s. It is important to understand that we all have narcissistic traits; the quality of self sufficiency, for example, can be highly adaptive. We all need a degree of self-reliance. It’s more useful to consider narcissism and its elements as a continuum rather than a yes-or-no matter.
Blissfully unburdened by any core principles or values; it was easy for Bill Clinton to shift to the center if that was what it took to be adored. For all of his many flaws, at least Clinton was a known quantity with roots firmly planted in America.
For all of the narcissist’s grandiosity, he is driven by a relentless need to pursue and maintain a source of narcissistic supply. Clinton was driven by polls; he made major policy decisions based on poll data. His sexual acting out is also typical of narcissists.
Of course, Obama could surprise us all with a well crafted speech signaling that he has heard the message loud and clear that America does not want what he wants. Or, more importantly, what George Soros wants.
I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.
Joy Tiz Most recent columns
Joy Tiz, Joytiz.com, born in Chicago, recalls when many democrats were actually normal people who were just wrong about everything. Joy holds a M.Sc. in psychology and a JD in law.
Joy has written extensively about current events and politics. She was a columnist at Americas Voices and now writes for Canada Free Press. Joy’s latest book, Obamanutz: A Cult Leader takes the White House provides an unblinking look at who Barack Obama is and what forces propelled him into the White House.
Email: joy@joytiz.com or Twitter at: Joytiz
