Leave it to my wife to come up with a jewelry metaphor for Barack
Obama. Obama is, according to my bride, the political equivalent
of cubic zirconia. Usually sold to people who love the look of
diamonds but can’t afford a real one or are fooled into buying an
imposter, cubic zirconia is superficially pretty and appealing.
But when subjected to the scrutiny of an expert or when placed
under great pressure, the falseness and weakness compared to the
real thing become apparent.
The pressure analogy is particularly appropriate given that
the source of Barack Obama’s troubles lie a mile under the
ocean’s surface, where pressures are about one ton per square
inch. The pressure of the situation is causing Obama’s vaunted
reputation as “competent” to crack like the false promise it
always was.
Unlike the ring that accidentally falls into the garbage
disposal and gets crushed, the destruction of Barack Obama’s
perceived competency is almost entirely self-inflicted. On May
28, he aggressively placed his own reputation under that literal
ton of pressure down at the oil-spewing well-head by saying “I
ultimately take responsibility for solving this crisis…I am the
president and the buck stops with me.” He was reinforcing his
words of a day earlier: “The American people should know that
from the moment this disaster began, the federal government has
been in charge of the response effort… In case you’re wondering
who’s responsible, I take responsibility.”
What kind of CEO would stake his reputation, his power, and
perhaps more importantly the reputation of the organization he
runs — in Obama’s case, the federal government of the United
States — on something over which he has absolutely no control?
Would the president of your company “take responsibility” for the
Cubs not winning the World Series? (Assuming your company doesn’t
own the Cubs, of course.)
As I’m writing this, I’m watching a television ad by BP CEO
Tony Hayward who is taking “full responsibility for cleaning up
the spill in the gulf.” That makes sense; BP has the technology
and the know-how to at least attempt to clean up the mess they
created. They’re the players on the team, even if it is a team as
historically hapless or mismanaged as the Cubs or BP. They, not
Obama, are the ones who can and should be on the field.
Meanwhile, as we know, Obama has decided that his own
taking of responsibility means he needs to figure out
“whose
ass to kick.” Obama’s message changes daily,
from anger to frustration to ass-kicking, as it must when someone
takes existential risk with his political capital in a situation
which a college freshman in a political science class would
recognize as posing far more risk than reward, far more
opportunity to look bad than to be the hero. It’s remarkable that
Obama has so quickly forgotten the political peril demonstrated
by the federal response to Hurricane Katrina. But having taken
responsibility, Obama feels he must be seen as “doing something,”
perhaps the most dangerous mode of operation for a politician —
especially a wounded one.
So, back to the question: What kind of CEO would take
responsibility for something entirely out of his control? The
same kind who would say, as Barack
Obama did two years ago, that
“generations from now, we will be able
to look back and tell our children” that his ascendency to
power “was the moment when the rise of
the oceans began to slow.” God-complex much,
Barack?
Some
discussion of
Narcissistic Personality Disorder from Psychology Today
seems à propos: “People with narcissistic
personality disorder are frequently perfectionists and need to be
the center of attention, receiving affection and admiration, and
controlling the situation.”
And
further: “Deep desire to be at the center
of things is served by extreme self-confidence, a combination
that makes narcissists attractive and even charming. Buoyed by a
coterie of admiring friends and associates — protected by the
armor of positive self-regard — someone with a mild-to-moderate
case of narcissism can float through life feeling pretty good
about himself. Since they feel entitled to special treatment,
they are easily offended, and readily harbor grudges. Yet
narcissists are often very popular — at least in the short
term.”
A president who was not a narcissist might have taken a
very different tack on the Deepwater Horizon spill: Rather than
risking his political capital and popularity by taking
responsibility for the clean-up, he would emphasize that
government’s capacities in the situation were limited but that
government was doing what it could. He would inform Gulf Coast
residents whose lives and businesses have been disrupted what
federal resources are available to help them rather than looking
for people to fire or asses to kick. In short, a wise and
non-narcissistic president would not have made the issue about
himself.
The wise approach, however, has an additional problem for
President Obama beyond his deeply self-absorbed personality: As a
Progressive, Obama believes that government should be able to do
almost anything…and should do everything it can. Obama is part of
a presidential Progressive lineage going back through FDR, Teddy
Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson who believed that technocrats should
be in charge of most aspects of American life, that private
citizens are too stupid to manage their own lives so we need
Progressives to do so for us. One might say that Progressivism is
an inherently narcissistic philosophy.
For Obama to admit, much less aggressively argue, that
government’s capability to plug an oil well is limited leads down
a dangerous road for those who want government to appear
omnipotent. After all, it’s hard for even a Progressive to argue
explicitly that government should do things in which it has no
competence. (The fact that they do precisely that on such a large
scale is a topic for another day.) Progressive politicians must
therefore aggrandize themselves and the abilities of government
in order to maintain the public’s sadly resilient
self-destructive belief in the power of politicians to fix
things. Progressives’ governing philosophy and psychology thus
prevent Obama from doing anything other than what he’s doing.
Indeed, rather than saying “I can’t fix this,”, Obama has
suggested that the federal government should acquire the
technological capability to fix future deep-water oil well leaks.
Again, his personality and Progressivism allow him no other
path.
One Obama apologist suggests that people are
“blaming
Obama for not being a god.” She forgets that
Obama is the one who took responsibility for stopping the oil
(and explicitly claimed that his “stimulus” would keep
unemployment below 8%.) The end of his façade of competency is
entirely self-inflicted. With luck, Obama has weakened people’s
blind faith in the competency of politicians generally and
presidents specifically.
I can only hope that once discovered to be what it is, the
recipient of that cubic zirconia — or its political equivalent
who resides today at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue — will never again
look at the semi-precious gem (once thought to be precious) with
the same approval, satisfaction, or gratitude.
