Thoughts on Mr. I, Me, Mine:
So what is the problem with a charismatic, narcissistic president? After all, most presidents by definition must be somewhat self-absorbed. Yet the rub is that the world has tuned Obama out. All his prime-time rhetoric from Afghanistan, the cool multicultural accentuation of Pakîstan and the Talîban, the photo-op reminders that it was Obama who ordered the mission that took out bin Laden — all this meant nothing to the Taliban, who will now patiently wait us out, unleash a North Vietnamese–like offensive very soon, and remind us that just because we don’t believe there are still things like victory and defeat in our messy wars, that does not mean there are not.
In other words, I worry that Vladimir Putin, the Iranian theocrats, the North Korean apparat, the Chinese central committee, the Muslim Brotherhood, and all the others who detest the United States have sized up Barack Obama. For 40 months they have acknowledged that his postracial image and his youthful charisma, as David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs rightly insisted, threw them for a loop — for a while. And that “for a while” is now ending, replaced with a new belief abroad that the more Obama talks about himself and his team, and the more emphatic he becomes with his “Make no mistake about it” and “Let me be perfectly clear” vacuities, the more he can at first safely be ignored, and then, quite soon, safely be taken advantage of.
Let’s hope it’s not for more than a few more months.
Is all this talk of narcissism just a bludgeon for the altruist morality?
“when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf…”
No, it isn’t.
..but what about the ‘corpse men’?!
I don’t understand your point.. what’s wrong with the commander-in-chief taking responsibility for the actions of the military? Don’t you want that?
It just seems to me that everyone who is complaining about the “narcissistic” President, assumes there’s something wrong with being narcissistic.. and I’ve yet to see anyone speaking on this subject actually distinguish what it is they dislike. Remember, narcissism is a synonym of egotism, which is often confused with egoism.
I think the point was that Obama thinks the soldiers are fighting for him and not their country.
I haven’t seen Obama take any responsibility but he does like to take credit. Nothing necessarily wrong with either but it would be.nice if he did both.
Well as it said in the article. We take it with some faith that a person that runs for the President is going to be a narcissist to some end. I think we can accept that and tolerate it to some point but it can quickly wear thin. The left was howling when Bush proclaimed “I’m the decider”. But have remained silent at Obama’s never ending “I, me, mine” complex. I guess they are too busy sucking on their slurpees.
There is a simple, albeit conservative, heuristic for this sort of thing: when things go well, it is only the players on your team who deserve credit. When things go wrong, you blame the man in the mirror.
Obvious, yes. But what is not obvious is that it is 100% true.
You push accolades for your guy’s success down to your guys. You stop responsibility for the failures right here, at your doorstep. That would be called leadership, a concept the donks are absolutely clueless about, per their focus groups. Something Stalin, Ho and Mao were as clueless about as O.
In the Taliban’s last attempt of a major attack in Kabul, they got their butts kicked by Afghan forces. Waiting us out might not work out so well for them.
“…the more Obama talks about himself and his team…”
Should have stopped at “himself.”