Praise and denunciation; Obama's pleasing payoff

Rebellion is in the air.

Rank and file voters are massing by the thousands to shout down Democrat politicians campaigning on behalf of President Obama's health care overhaul.

His visage appears on the internet dressed up as the Joker, the villain in Batman movies.

Obama does not seem deterred by the mockery.

"Grandiosity, more than anything else, is what characterizes Obama's character and campaign," observes American Thnker. "Grandiosity is also, more than anything else, what characterizes narcissism, and Obama's narcissism has become obvious to many."

Charles Krauthammer, a journalist trained as a physician, asked during last year's campaign, "[H]as there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime achievements?"

Sam Vaknin, Ph.D., author of Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited, writes that "Barack Obama appears to be a narcissist," and offers a detailed explanation.

I first theorized about Obama and narcissism on June 23 and have followed the online discussion closely. Now, a new perspective is evolving. Although he is being pilloried for his agenda and major parts of it may be headed for the rocks, perhaps Obama has us right where he wants us.

That is to say, we're all watching Obama much of the time, not out of admiration but out of amazement or horror at his egomanical and reckless campaign to overturn the basic values of Americans.

American Thinker observes today, "Obama's entire campaign is nothing more than a demand to be recognized as superior without commensurate accomplishments. For individual instances of the undistinguished senator's grandiosity, please see Barack Obama Audacity Watch.

"Two other very reliable witnesses to Obama's narcissism are Oprah Winfrey and her guru, Eckhart Tolle, both themselves pathological narcissists. Delusions of grandeur interpersonally connect Obama, Oprah, and her guru. All three believe they can, even that they must, change the world for the better, and that means garnering for themselves more and more adulation, what the psychologists call "narcissistic supply."

Here's the dilemma. Narcissism is considered by the medical profession to be a "personality disorder." If that disorder appears to serve the interests of the disordered personality, by attracting worshipful followers and adulation as well as furious denunciation, how can that personality be persuaded to change his ways?

Attention is what he seeks. Attention is what he gets.

A second dilemma lies in the quirky nature of narcissism, which does not insist on praise but only importance, or grandiosity. Even condemnation by thousands of voters can be seen as validation of one's importance.

This raises the question: Does it matter, to a narcissist, whether the audience is applauding or booing?