Is Obama a narcissist?

[Drake Tungsten]

The latest indicator...

For Obama, a changed tone in presidential humor

Barack Obama, the Insult Comic President, was up to his old shtick Saturday night.

Breaking with presidential punch line tradition for the second consecutive year, Obama dropped zinger after zinger on his opponents and allies alike at the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner. Obama went all Don Rickles on a broad range of topics and individuals: Vice President Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, presidential advisers David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel, the news media, Jay Leno, and Republicans Michael Steele, Scott Brown, John McCain and Sarah Palin.

Except for a mild joke pegged to his falling approval ratings, Obama mostly spared Obama during his 14-minute stand-up routine. Palin, he said, calls Twitter and Facebook "the socialized media." He dubbed Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican Party, "the Notorious G.O.P." The newly enacted health-care law, the president joked, has "hundreds" of secret provisions, such as one covering people in Massachusetts who've suffered "short-term memory loss" about the state's own efforts to reform health care. "So good news, Mitt!" Obama said of Republican critic and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. "Your condition is covered!"

The president elicited a few shocked "oooohs" from the audience of 2,600 when he told this joke about Charlie Crist, the Florida governor who is defecting from the Republican Party to run for the Senate: "Odds are that the Salahis are here," he said, referring to the gate-crashing Virginia couple. "There haven't been people who were more unwelcome at a party since Charlie Crist."

The outer-directed tone of the material, which was credited to Axelrod, White House speechwriter Jon Favreau and ex-Hillary Clinton speechwriter Jon Lovett, was in keeping with Obama's inaugural voyage as presidential joker last year. Making the rounds of the traditional spring dinners, the president cracked wise on just about everyone but himself. Typical Obama line in 2009: "We have a lot in common," he said of House Minority Leader John Boehner, a man with an odd perma-tan. "He is a person of color. Although not a color that appears in the natural world." (Boehner was the butt of a similar joke on Saturday: The new health-care law, Obama said, will exclude the cast of "Jersey Shore" and Boehner from "the indoor tanning tax.")

Obama's derisive tone surprises and dismays some of the people who've written jokes for presidents past.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/02/AR2010050203125.html

An unwillingness/inability to engage in self-deprecating humor is a definite red flag for narcissism...

Seriousness and sense of intrusion and coercion – The narcissist is dead serious about himself. He may possess a subtle, wry, and riotous sense of humor, scathing and cynical, but rarely is he self-deprecating. The narcissist regards himself as being on a constant mission, whose importance is cosmic and whose consequences are global. If a scientist – he is always in the throes of revolutionizing science. If a journalist – he is in the middle of the greatest story ever. If a novelist - he is on his way to a Booker or Nobel prize.

This self-misperception is not amenable to light-headedness or self-effacement. The narcissist is easily hurt and insulted (narcissistic injury). Even the most innocuous remarks or acts are interpreted by him as belittling, intruding, or coercive.

http://samvak.tripod.com/obama.html

[Hauldren Collider]

Obama really is the polar opposite of Ronald Reagan.

[giblets]

Why do you have "banana" in Japanese as a poll option?

[Drake Tungsten]

If I hadn't included that, the poll would be invalid and HC's annoying older brother would be posting about it.

[flash9286]

Every president is a narcissist.

[epmd]

Did you guys hear his commencement speech at Michigan.

Holy ****ing jesus...

[Drake Tungsten]

Did you guys hear his commencement speech at Michigan.

Holy ****ing jesus...

No. What did he say?

[epmd]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/us/politics/02obama.html

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — President Obama on Saturday directly confronted the sharpening political rancor in Washington, on the airwaves and on the Internet, telling the graduating class at the University of Michigan that the country needs a “basic level of civility in our public discourse.”

As a panoply of protesters shouted outside, many of them carrying signs decrying Mr. Obama as a “socialist,” the president told some 8,500 graduates —and 80,000 family members, professors and others in the audience in Michigan Stadium — that passions were overheated and that people on all sides of the political debate needed to find ways to listen to one another.

“Throwing around phrases like ‘socialist’ and ‘Soviet-style takeover,’ ‘fascist’ and ‘right-wing nut’ may grab headlines, but it also has the effect of comparing our government, or our political opponents, to authoritarian and even murderous regimes,” Mr. Obama said. Such rhetoric, he said, closes the door to political compromise.

Clad in a black robe, the president, who received an honorary doctor of law degree from the university, at times struck impassioned tones, giving a defense of government intervention at times of crisis.

“Governments make sure that oil spills are cleaned up by the companies that cause them,” Mr. Obama said in a reference to the BP oil spill that is threatening a vast part of the Gulf of Mexico. The White House said Mr. Obama would travel to the region on Sunday with a “small footprint” to avoid getting in the way of cleanup efforts.

The mostly friendly crowd inside the stadium was the largest that Mr. Obama has addressed since his inauguration. He urged the graduates to engage with people from different backgrounds and different experiences, and with opposing points of views.

“If you’re someone who only reads the editorial page of The New York Times, try glancing at the page of The Wall Street Journal once in awhile,” he said. “If you’re a fan of Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh, try reading a few columns on the Huffington Post Web site.” Mr. Obama has followed his own advice, a White House spokesman said afterward, and tunes in to his critics on the cable television channels, particularly when he has time during travel on Air Force One.

“It may make your blood boil,” the president said. “Your mind may not often be changed. But the practice of listening to opposing views is essential for effective citizenship.”

and this as well

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OBAMA_SUPREME_COURT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Obama spoke of judges who ignore the will of Congress and the democratic process, imposing judicial solutions instead of letting the political process solve problems.

“In the ’60s and ’70s, the feeling was, is that liberals were guilty of that kind of approach,” Obama said. “What you’re now seeing, I think, is a conservative jurisprudence that oftentimes makes the same error.”

He said the notion of judicial restraint should apply to liberal and conservative jurists. Instead, the president said arguments over original intent and other legal theories end up giving judges a lot of power — sometimes more power than elected representatives have.

Obama said judges should presume that the laws produced by the House and Senate and state legislatures should get “some deference as long as core constitutional values are observed.”

so much for political dissent as being patriotic.

[giblets]

Obama really is the polar opposite of Ronald Reagan.

Yeah, I'm sure Reagan wasn't full of himself.

If I hadn't included that, the poll would be invalid and HC's annoying older brother would be posting about it.

...?

Every president is a narcissist.

bingo

[Hauldren Collider]

Yeah, I'm sure Reagan wasn't full of himself.

Reagan was a king of self-deprecating humor.

[DinoDoc]

The answer to that question is obvious.

[David Floyd]

Obama really is the polar opposite of Ronald Reagan.

This.

Reagan, regardless of your political beliefs, was a genuinely humble man.

[Darius871]

[Drake Tungsten]

[David Floyd]

This is the real awesome.