A stab at a theory of Obama

Spencer Warren writes:

You write:

“However, his support for the porkulus bill does tell us something substantial about him: that he’s utterly careless and irresponsible about the well-being of the United States, that he’s an unreconstructed and corrupt leftist who appropriates unprecedented amounts of money under false pretenses in order to enrich his friends and political supporters.”

Is it not astonishing and unfathomable that Obama, the newly inaugurated president who won a smashing electoral victory, completely abandoned any role writing the bill, instead giving the Pelosi and Reid gangs carte blanche? This is hardly the mark of a strong figure.

LA replies:

I agree, that is truly amazing. Right at the start of his messiahship, with one of the most consequential bills in history in the works, a measure to meet an emergency so dire that passage of the bill was the only alternative to “catastrophe,” he hands over the actual writing of the bill to a bunch of corrupt hacks. Meaning, he didn’t care that the supposedly absolutely essential stimulus bill would turn into the porkulus bill. Meaning, he didn’t even attempt to look honest, responsible, or statesmanlike.

What does this mean? As I’ve said, I don’t pretend to understand him. But for the heck of it, I will hazard a try.

1. At his insubstantial core, he is, as I think Steve Sailer said, an identity artist. Becoming president is the ultimate achievement of his identity acrobatics. Yes, there is his commitment to and need for a black identity, but whether his black identity is deeper than his identity artistry, or just another dispensable identity, is not known. Even Sailer professes not to be sure whether Obama has cynically gone beyond the blackness-obsessed author of Dreams from my Father.

2. He has a strong commitment to radical left and appeasement politics, and will move in those directions to the extent he feels he can get away with it.

3. He has absolutely no problem with ordinary or extraordinary political corruption. He’s a product of Chicago Democratic politics, and is entirely cynical about and accepting of such matters.

So, the bill greatly expands government control and intrusion into the economy. It greatly expands the taxing power, and it helps leftist causes and basic Democratic constituencies in the most blatantly corrupt manner ever seen in American politics. The bill thus fits Obama’s leftism, it fits his comfort with corruption and payoffs, and it also fits his fundamental leftist and racial alienation from America and its well-being. So he doesn’t care how bad the stimulus bill is objectively, or even about how bad it makes him look. That’s not what he’s about. At his core, what he’s about is the construction of an identity that allows him to manipulate and have his way with a country he fundamentally doesn’t like. At some level of himself, he doesn’t think the badness of the bill will reflect on him. He’s above all that.

Spencer Warren replies:

Interesting. It could be the tip-off that his presidency will fail badly. His inertia is just absolutely inexplicable, unless you have it in your comment!

LA replies:

VFR had some long discussions trying to figure out George W. Bush, and it looks as though Obama will keep us similarly busy. Now, if Howard Sutherland only had some Chicago friends who understood the mentality of Hawaii-born, mulatto politicians on Chicago’s South Side!

- end of initial entry -

David B. writes:

I just read your exchange with Spencer Warren on Obama. A while back you wrote that Obama did not have Clinton’s air of sleaziness or Bush’s appearance of stupidity. Obama has his own negative traits.

Clinton’s sleaziness resulted in the Lewinsky Affair and the endless scandals. Bush promised in the 2000 campaign to Hispanicize the United States and tried to do just that. You wrote that you wondered if Bush had the intelligence to be President. After eight years, you concluded that he did not.

Obama looks like an alienated nonwhite leftist. He also seems a weak reed. Will Obama’s negatives prove to be part of his presidency as with his two predecessors? They probably will.

LA replies:

David wrrote:

“Obama looks like an alienated nonwhite leftist. He also seems a weak reed. Will Obama’s negatives prove to be part of his presidency as with his two predecessors? They probably will.”

I think that’s an extremely insightful comment. It’s a theory, “Presidential weakness of character is presidential destiny,” which David has derived from the last two presidents and is now applying to Obama.

Below is another comment David sent yesterday.

David wrote:

I just read your latest in which you write, “One definite feeling I have is that an alien being, a typical alienated nonwhite leftist, is the president of the United States.” This reminded me of a post you made in August 2007 concerning the execution murder of black college students in Newark, New Jersey.

You described the attorneys and judges who turn loose such illegal alien criminals as “alienated malcontents who deliberately or with depraved indifference unleash dangerous criminals onto society.” It occurred to me that the people referred to here as “alienated malcontents” are usually white liberals. Obama as an alienated nonwhite leftist is in a slightly different group. He comes by it naturally.

I believe I first saw the term “alienated” in 1968 when I was a college freshman. Years later, I read somewhere that it was one of the original Frankfurt School designations.

John Hagan writes:

I tend to think most everyone who runs for president is more narcissistic than average so I’m not sure we can label Obama this easily, and then follow his personality in a straight line from that conclusion to help explain his behavior. Bill Clinton on the other hand was/is a malignant narcissist of the highest order. I also believe he was a sexual predator who raped at least one women. Whatever Obama is, or is not, I doubt that he dwells in the rarified, narcissistic malignancy that Bill Clinton floated in.

LA replies:

But my “stab at a theory of Obama” said nothing about malignant narcissism, let alone sexual predation. I wasn’t thinking about Clinton or comparing Obama to him.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 17, 2009 05:00 PM | Send