I have made no secret of my feeling we have a President with a diagnosable personality disorder (DSM-IV-TR 301.81). Before you accuse me of hyperbole (or likely worse), check out this:
DSM IV definition: Someone who suffers from Narcissistic Personality disorder (NPD) has at least 5 of the following characteristics:
- has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
- is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
- believes that he or she is “special” and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)
- requires excessive admiration
- has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations
- is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
- lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others
- is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her
- shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes
I submit that Obama exhibits nearly all these traits. He certainly is in love with himself .
You can’t look at this and not be reminded of the classic Michelangelo painting of Narcissus
Victor Davis Hanson has a column on NRO that takes on this point far better than I can possibly dream of doing:
Unfortunately, the latest triumphalism is a continuance of a long line of self-adulation that we have grown accustomed to in Barack Obama since he came to the public’s attention — the professor’s two memoirs without a single commensurate scholarly publication; the Latinate motto; the faux-Greek columns; the biblical quelling of the rising seas and cooling of the planet; the fallback retreat to the Victory Column when questions were raised about the appropriateness of the Brandenburg Gate as a venue for his speech; and so on. The common characteristics in Obama’s I/me/my career have been such rhetorical, visual, and symbolic efforts to mask an absence of accomplishment (e.g., why not even one Harvard Law Review article, or perhaps a single publication as a University of Chicago lecturer, or a successful program as a Chicago community organizer, or a signature piece of legislation as an Illinois legislator, or an acknowledged legislative record as a U.S. senator?).
You really must read the whole thing. One take away is that We the People can trust nothing Obama says about anything. But another, more important, is that the rest of the world sees Obama as a hollow, crass, unreliable man whose word means nothing at all. And that, dear friends, is dangerous.
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