I’m retracting this post in record time, thanks in great part to commenter CB, who wrote,
Not an Obama fan here by any means BUT, you need to watch the video. He was NOT flashing the peace sign…he held up two fingers as he clearly said, ““We just have two more folks we’re waiting on.
There are so many serious things to be upset with Obama about….we don’t have to make stuff up. http://conservativefiringline.com/did-obama-flash-peace-sign-at-nuclear-summit/
I didn’t see the video, because I didn’t know there was one. The following sources are among those who intentionally misled its readers to take a cheap shot at the President: Instapundit, Drudge Report, Daily Mail, Times of Israel, NY Daily News, Biz Pac Review, and more conservative blogs and radio shows than I can count, largely because of Drudge and Instapundit.
I’m disgusted with all of them, and furious, in part at myself, that I was taken in. The “peace sign” was obviously a “two,” it lasted a second, and was not intended for the cameras.
As for me, I was taken in by my own confirmation bias, because bias makes us stupid. Obama is a narcissist, and this seemed like just a credible escalation of behavior we already knew he was capable of engaging in, and if he did this in fact, I would not be surprised. It was obvious from the video, however, that he did NOT do it, and news media that reported otherwise were either malicious or incompetent.
I apologize to Ethics Alarms readers, and the President.
Now let’s see which sources set the record straight….
Ethics Alarms 
No worries. Reading your posts has actually made me less biased and better able to see through talk radio and news media.
Thanks, I needed that.
So true. I’ve begun listening with a much more critical ear too. In fact, I’m down to one talk radio host who even comes close to not being as bad as those on the left with manipulative propaganda.
Unfortunately, the damage has been already done. This picture will show up on every website with an ax to grind about Obama’s foolishness. Not that there’s enough already available, like his wave at the Cuban baseball game after the terrorists attacks on Brussels and his inept “Last Tango In Buenas Aires”. Now it’s the ax grinders time to look foolish.
Yup.
Just a thought, wouldn’t ANYONE who wanted the job of POTUS have to be a narcissist and/or megalomaniac? Think about the danger to person and family – for life. The lack of privacy and spontaneity. The fact that everything you say and do – or did – is under intense scrutiny and becomes public fodder for every Tom, Dick and Jack to judge. The intense and overwhelming stress especially in times of disaster or war. The constant travel and time away from family. Who the heck in their right mind would want that for themselves and their family aside from a narcissist or megalomaniac? Isn’t that why celebrities find the transition into politics so easy? If you look back at the more humble (relatively) of past presidents – Carter, Ford, Coolidge, Bush Senior, Cleveland, Filmore – other than Lincoln, most are not remembered as effective leaders. So is the disorder of narcissism a requirement for the office of President?
Narcissist? That’s an overstatement. Leaders of all kinds tend to feel special and apart from the crowd, but that doesn’t make them clinical narcissists. The have big egos, in general because they are used to being successful and having other admire them. That doesn’t make the narcissists. Some are sociopaths…
And some of them are just great leaders: For example Eisenhower and Harry Truman. I don’t think either would fit the description of narcissist. Think of Ike with the note is his pocket ready to release in case the Normandy landing failed taking full responsibility for the failure. Truman spend his remaining years in a small home in Independance, MO.
Here’s neat study—I wouldn’t put too much reliance on 100 year hearsay diagnosis, but about 10 POTUSes qualify as bona fide narcissists, and I’d agree with most of those.
I was going to say essentially that; that there is a clear distinction between having narcissistic tendencies and clinical narcissism, and it’s really not an order of magnitude as much a qualitative distinction. Most effective leaders have narcissistic traits, and it functions as an asset to them, whereas clinical narcissism is very painful to the sufferer and those around him or, less often, her. They CAN be effective, for a time, but they’re always just this side of disaster.
I believe Obama suffers from narcissistic personality disorder. He meets most of the DSM criteria.
When I saw the title of this post, my first thought was that we had all been taken in by an April Fool’s “joke,” riffing on President Obama’s personality and its presumed flaws. We all forgot — trust no one, especially no one in the Media and especially anything on the internet.
Thanks for the presidential narcissism study link. Love it. Very interesting.
Jack, kudos to you for the quick-trigger response in pulling down your post. I would hope and expect nothing less from you. And good for you also for noting the confirmation bias, and calling a penalty stroke on yourself for it.
At the same time – not so fast.
You apologized “for having been misled.” But the sources you list who misled you include BizPac Review (which I notice still has not retracted), Instapundit, and Drudge. I can’t speak knowledgeably about the Daily News or the Times of Israel, but at least with the others it looks to me you’re practicing unprotected journalism, and got the predictable infection.
Why did you not vet that story against a legitimate news organization? If you’re going to apologize for not being misled, how about a pledge to to a better job of fact-checking than those hack
OK, never mind. Here’s the bigger issue. In that same article, you throw around phrases like
“For almost eight years, observers have pointed out that Barack Obama exhibits the characteristics of a pathological narcissist. This stunt approached signature significance.”
I call bullshit, and not just because something that didn’t happen can’t approach ‘signature significance.’
I am baffled by your claim that Obama is a “pathological narcissist,” so I finally did what you should do. I googled “Obama narcissist.” I urge you to try it yourself.
The entire first page consists of jerk-water right-wing nut-job conspiracy theorists like “The Gateway Pundit,” “The Independent Sentinel,” and “Dr. Hurd.” These are sources that make Instapundit and Drudge look Pulitzer-worthy – nothing more than hack bloggers. Most of them refer ultimately to the Israeli self-declared expert in narcissism Sam Vaknin, who says “Obama appears to be a narcissist,” but also cautions against diagnosing from afar.
The one single exception you might hang your hat on is Charles Krauthammer. CK is a bloviating ideologue of the first order, but he does in fact have some genuine clinical credentials, being a grad of Harvard Med School and having practiced psychiatry for a couple of years.
Is it Krauthammer and Vaknin who constitute the “observers” who’ve been calling him a narccixsist for eight years? Because honestly I’m not buying it, not one bit. That same guy Vaknin talks about how Stalin and Hitler were narcissists, and I honestly believe anyone who can’t tell the difference between those two and Barack Obama shouldn’t be listened to.
There is, in fact, serious journalism out there on this issue. The Economist took Charles Krauthammer to task on this specific charge, and frankly tore him to pieces: read it yourself here:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2014/10/johnson-politics-and-language
One sample quote:
“…never mind the facts; the myth seems unkillable. Neither the analysis of a great scientific populariser (Mr Liberman) nor reach of Buzzfeed (130m monthly users) nor the sting of satire (of which Mr Colbert is a virtuoso) can defeat confirmation bias. Mr Krauthammer and a host of others “know” that Mr Obama is a narcissist. Every time he utters an “I” proves it to be so…But for fun facts to be facts (take note, Mr Krauthammer), they must be true.
Let me close with your own first paragraph (which by the way, seriously, kudos to you for leaving the post up – I know you could have taken it down, and that would’ve been cowardly. So serious props for keeping it up).
You wrote:
“1. The photo is a bias test. If someone has decided that Obama is hopeless incompetent who habitually confuses grandstanding with leadership, and who long ago checked out emotionally and intellectually and is less concerned than ever about “optics” as well as all those other annoying component of being a competent President, this shot confirms it all.”
If the shoe fits…
1. I didn’t rely on any of those sources, except the usually left-leaning Daily News. Instapundit is hard right, but the professor does not typically link to fake stories. The photo looked like what was described. I wouldn’t be so smug about it, if I were you.
2. Since the left-slanted mainstream media routinely ignores or buries actual stories with disturbing regularity, I won’t be chided for not checking with reliable left-wing media, since they aren’t trustworthy. I looked, I didn’t find any reference to the episode at all.
3. Obama will go down as one of the top three narcissists we have ever had as President. He’s like a psychology course hypothetical. I’m relying on none of your sources, just res ipsa loquitur. He fits every feature of a pathological narcissist to the extreme. Only a stubborn Obama apologist could deny it. I don’t have to appeal to authority. Denying Obama is a narcissist is like denying Hillary is a liar. Why yes, sources that are invested in making excuses for Obama deny or ignore his obvious narcissism, and those who properly recognize his incompetence proclaim it. That’s the usual set up to allow partisans to deny the truth.
I’ve studied presidential behavior since grade school. I knew Teddy, JFK, Wilson, FDR, Jackson, Nixon and LBJ were clinical narcissists before I knew what narcissism was. Of course, psychologists and historians agree on this now, as they will on Obama, who ranks up with the top three, and probably on top. I don’t see how anyone can ignore it, frankly, given the evidence: teh vanity, the boasting, the refusal to accept accountability or to admit mistakes, the propensity to make pronouncements beyond his expertise, his lack of compassion for others, his making everything about him…it’s damning that you would even try to deny it.
4. Your quote, then, is irrelevant. I’m not relying on Krauthammer or any authority but my own expertise on leadership psychology. Maybe he relied on me.
5. As for your last “gotcha,” the whole post was based on the photo described. As regards that photo, my position stands and is well-supported. The fact that the photo didn’t happen as described doesn’t change my conclusion of what it would have meant at all.
Oh…I notice that neither you nor any other mainstream source…that is, left-biased—takes issue with long-distance diagnoses of Trump’s narcissism, which is based on the same criteria as what marks Obama. Wonder why that is?
Not true. Read the Economist article, which ranks narcissists objectively according to Krauthammer’s suggested frequency of use of “I.”
By that measure, Trump is extremely high–Obama extremely low.
But use of “I” is not the test and never has been. It’s not even one of the criteria I use to sniff out both Trump and Obama.
Seriously? That was the sum of the Economist’s argument? How desperate and dishonest.
Jack, I don’t see anywhere where YOU have defined narcissism. All I see is you claiming it’s “obvious,” that it’s res ipsa loquitur, that you don’t need to cite any sources, that you yourself are the best source. But I never see you giving your definition, or evidence.
Then you say the use of “I” is not the test and never has been. And you call it “desperate and dishonest.”
Hold on there.
I didn’t make that claim. Nor did the Economist.
Charles Krauthammer made that claim. http://nation.foxnews.com/2014/09/16/krauthammer-obama-clearly-narcissist-lives-cocoon-surrounded-sycophants
And remember Krauthammer is the only person mentioned in this debate who actually has some credentials to talk about narcissism.
And Krauthammer’s definition has also been used by George Will. And by Fox News. And by Elliot Abrams at National Review. So there’s actually a pattern of real definitions being used by real people.
So there’s an actual definition, and it wasn’t by me or by the Economist.
However – the Economist totally debunked Krauthammer’s definition, showing that when you actually examine the use of the pronoun “I,” Obama ranks very low. When I say “debunked,” I mean they actually looked up comparative uses of the pronoun “I” by Obama and other presidents, and found out that the factual claim made by Krauthammer was in fact not true.
So, when you say “The use of ‘I’ is not the test and never has been,” first of all you’re factually wrong, several people HAVE used it. Secondly, the guy who originally used it at least has some serious credentials for doing so.
And thirdly and mainly – what is YOUR definition of it? I fail to see it, beyond your repeated claims that it’s “obvious.” It’s not obvious to me, in fact the contrary. And I’m not that much dumber than you are, Jack. So if it’s so obvious, make me understand how you’re defining it? Because I don’t get it.
Oh for God’s sake, Charles. Krauthammer was making a shorthand, layman’s, Cosmo-level test that you can’t find in any serious source.
Here’s the Mayo clinic’s definition, which is one of many I’ve had on file for years:
How can anyone read that list (which does not contain”uses ‘I’ excessively, you will note) and not think of Obama, who has whined about not getting credit, repeatedly; who boasted of controlling the seas, who recently blamed his military advisors for the botched training of Syrian fighters policy, who accepted a Nobel Peace Prize for doing nothing, whose arrogance is palpable, who famously said in an early interview that he could probably do the job of any appointee or advisor better than they could—who EXCEPT a raging narcissist says this? Who, like Trump, CANNOT admit a mistake, even spinning his own lie about keeping one’s doctor and health plan, by saying that he said something else.
Here’s a slightly more clinical source—not that it ALSO does not talk about use of “I”:
Now, I can spend the time and find specific incidents, many many of them, that place Obama is this description, but I don’t think it’s worth my time, because anyone who doesn’t shout “Obama!” reading those symptoms—for example, recall the examples of Obama showing apparent absence of empathy, like briefly noting the deaths of two NY cops and immediately returning to golf, or his similar brush-off of the plane shot down in the Ukraine? This is WHY he was criticized for not leaving the baseball game in Cuba after the Brussels attacks: people recognize the pattern.
I’m going to throw it open to your colleagues here, Charles,who might enjoy pointing out to you the elephant in the room that you seem to be unable to see.
Hey, readers! Can you attach a specific incident or quote or ten to all of those 9 symptoms?
Here’s one to get you started, from yesterday, for #9: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/274967-former-defense-secretary-obama-double-crossed-me
That is an excellent list of definitions, thank you; that’s a service.
And I applaud the invitation to come up with “specific incidents or quotes” to back them up, because that’s the essence of the question. What you find “obvious” i find exactly the opposite, and the only resolution will come from looking at facts.
When I read those definitions, my mind, like yours, definitely goes to Donald Trump. My mind, unlike yours, does not go to Obama.
So let me kick it off.
Here are clips from 40 speeches of Obama talking about the importance of empathy. http://cultureofempathy.com/obama/VideoClips.htm
(by contrast, try Googling Trump on the subject of empathy)
Here’s a piece talking about Obama and humility, suggesting his is in fact a quiet and genuine humility:
http://www.beliefnet.com/News/Politics/The-God-Factor-From-Obama-a-Quiet-Humble-Faith.aspx
More on empathy: Here’s a headline quote the night after Obama beat Romney:
“Tuesday night, Barack Obama won reelection because of one big reason: empathy. More specifically, he and the Democratic Party were more successful at expressing empathy than Mitt Romney and the Republicans.”
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/obama-empathy/
Here’s Reuters’ headline on Obama’s trip to Cuba:
“Obama wins over Cubans with straight talk and humility.”
Here’s EJ Dionne on Obama’s Christian humility, and how right-wing critics of him are out of line on the subject:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obamas-breakfast-prayer/2015/02/08/c82e0f7a-ae3b-11e4-abe8-e1ef60ca26de_story.html
Here’s a piece on how a speech to his campaign staff illustrated authenticity and humility:
https://www.americanexpress.com/us/small-business/openforum/articles/what-leaders-can-learn-from-president-obamas-speech-to-his-staff/
Actually, as I list these examples, I’m starting to think examples are not going to help resolve the question after all. There are probably hundreds of examples on each side: you just see them differently than i do. I honestly am not sure how to resolve the question of whether or not he’s a narcissist. I just do not see it, and you do.
Which probably says something about the nature of psychiatric diagnoses – if they can’t be falsified or verified by any agreed-upon objective data, then they’re just inflammatory. I don’t know.
I agree completely with your last observation, Charles. It is one reason psychology and psychiatry, which once showed so much promise, have been such disappointments, and look more like pseudo-science every day.
Which is only to say that there is no objectively identified creature called a “narcissist.” A narcissist is someone that someone else believes is a narcissist based on the cluster of qualities and characteristics the psychiatric profession decided to call “narcissism,” and various someone elses will disagree, either because of differing standards, sensitivity, competence, bias, a fee, you name it. All saying that Obama is a narcissist really means is “he looks and acts like one to me.”
He looks and acts like one to me.
Jack, that feels to me like a very fair and accurate way to describe the phenomenon too, I agree.
“psychology and psychiatry, which once showed so much promise, have been such disappointments, and look more like pseudo-science every day.”
That’s a whole separate topic, but I wanted to say that I completely agree with you, and furthermore that it’s a very important and powerful observation.
“Extremely low”? I don’t think so. Here’s the Post’s Phillip Bump defending Obama, comparing his use of personal pronouns to Clinton and Bush…both high on the narcissism scale, and Obama tops both. As I would suspect.But that’s just one of many markers, and alone is not definitive.
The guy who lectures Netanyahu on things not being so bad for Israel and tells the U.S. citizenry not to sweat Islamic terrorism because more people die slipping in their bathtubs is not a narcissist? Come on, Charles. If that’s not narcissism speaking (loud and clear) for itself, what is?
How you get from “lecturing” to “narcissism” is not only unclear, it’s practically a non sequitur. Try actually defining the word, rather than just asserting some vague, undefined connection.
It’s funny how he picks the relative significance of statistics like that.
You only missed the barely-concealed, and often open, narcissistic rage.
Rage? Of all the qualities one does NOT associate with Obama, that has to be top of the list.
Note his nickname “no-drama Obama.” Note all the critiques of him being not too emotional, but rather not emotional enough.
I fail to see how Obama can fairly be described as rageful.
It’s not proven, or even IMHO probable, that some of the sources deliberately misled. You yourself are an example, you did not intentionally mislead.
The test is – how many had both the dilligence and integrity to retract (as you did so promptly)? Those continue to deserve trust. The rest, well, we now know they put out lies, not just inadvertant falsehoods.
People of integrity who don’t share my views are my most valued friends. They fact-check me. I too am human, subject to confirmation bias, so rely on them to straighten me out when I go astray. Something I try really hard not to do, but it happens sometimes anyway.
Apology accepted of course. Not to do so would be both churlish and hypocritical on my part. Far worse than the original offense.
Agreed, especially with the link aggregators.
Narcissism in general and especially grandiose narcissism is getting more prevalent in modern presidents. Certainly the further back you go the less prevalent they are. Don’t you think that is because the job has become increasingly untenable? It was a different world a hundred years ago. It was a lot easier to be the president before TV, computers, the internet, digital recordkeeping, social media, DNA evidence, modern forensics and jet travel. Every aspect of their past and their spouse and children’s pasts are now easily scrutinized. You (and your spouse and kids) don’t get the passes everyone else gets for “youthful indiscretions”, all of a sudden you are judged by some stupid thing you may have said or done 20, 30, 40 or more years ago….
Just imagine how life-altering it would be for your personal freedom, your wife and children’s personal freedom. Not just for four or eight years, but for life. Would your family agree? Would they support it?
So anyone in the modern age who is sane, balanced and enjoys a somewhat free and enjoyable life with their family would refuse to run.
It was always untenable. It used to kill Presidents. Now they are living into their nineties.
I would never accept the job, primarily for the reasons you state, especially considering what a checkered past I have.
“Narcissism is getting more prevalent in modern presidents. Certainly the further back you go the less prevalent they are.”
That’s actually not so clear. In 1997, Ronald Deluga wrote what is apparently considered the definitive piece on Presidential narcissism. He ranked all the presidents up until then. The most narcissistic was Chester Arthur, hardly a modern president. (The least was Coolidge).
Details at http://www.bryant.edu/news/news-articles/2015/12/07/deluga-an-authority-on-presidential-charisma-narcissism-effectiveness/
The Pew list I posted on another thread is better, I think. Arthur was vain, but very insecure. Here it is again. Pew has 7 ahead of Arthur: LBJ, Teddy, Jackson, FDR,JFK, Nixon and Clinton. I’d agree with all of those. Grant, Cleveland and Monroe are behind Coolidge.
That is a fascinating list, and a most respectable methodology too, or so it seems to me. Maybe they’ll redo it in a few years so we can get a definitive reading on Obama (they purposely excluded sitting presidents).