Michael Gerson’s reading of President Obama’s speech to the UN is both shrewd and damning.
Some choice passages:
Obama’s rhetorical method in international contexts — given supreme expression at the United Nations this week — is a moral dialectic. The thesis: pre-Obama America is a nation of many flaws and failures. The antithesis: The world responds with understandable but misguided prejudice. The synthesis: Me. Me, at all costs; me, in spite of all terrors; me, however long and hard the road may be. How great a world we all should see, if only all were more like… me.
On several occasions, Obama attacked American conduct in simplistic caricatures a European diplomat might employ or applaud. He accused America of acting “unilaterally, without regard for the interests of others” — a slander against every American ally who has made sacrifices in Iraq and Afghanistan. He argued that, “America has too often been selective in its promotion of democracy” — which is hardly a challenge for the Obama administration, which has yet to make a priority of promoting democracy or human rights anywhere in the world.
The world, of course, has its problems, too. It has accepted “misperceptions and misinformation.” It can be guilty of a “reflexive anti-Americanism.” “Those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world’s problems alone.” Translation: I know you adore me because I am better than America’s flawed past. But don’t just stand there loving me, do something.
I can recall no other major American speech in which the narcissism of a leader has been quite so pronounced.
24 responses so far
1 JeninCT // Sep 26, 2009 at 11:43 pm
According to Dr. Sam Vaknin: http://samvak.tripod.com/msla.html
“The narcissist is preoccupied with projecting a loveable image, and maintains this projected image and invests resources and energy in it, sometimes depleting him to the point of rendering him vulnerable to external threats.”
We are in trouble.
2 rbottoms // Sep 27, 2009 at 4:05 am
Oh for heaven sakes.
If this is the level of psychosis on the Right after losing one presidential election, I imagine the results of losing in 2012 will present as blood flowing from your eyes as you claw them out in disbelief.
It must be some kind of Jedi mind trick David Frum is attempting, on one hand denouncing Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh while simultaneously allowing equally wacked out nonsense such as this to pass as reasonable political commentary.
Run for the hills, Obama is out of control!!! The Secret Service must implement a back up plan to wrest the Football away from our American Darth Vader should he decide to launch against the Chinese like Emperor Cartagia’s demented offering to the Shadows.
What in the name of God is wrong with you people? You lose one election and go stark raving mad.
There is not a whit of difference between this steaming pile and Sarah Palin’s death panel crap or Glenn Beck’s step dancer assassination squad revelation.
Any time I start to think the entire Republican party has NOT been overrun by lunatics I am reminded that such hopes for a sane opposition party are my own wishful thinking.
3 BoolaBoola // Sep 27, 2009 at 5:13 am
And WHY does President Obama calculate that he can accomplish more if he begins by apologising for USA?
WHOSE actions is he really apologising for? Whose memory is he trying to exorcise?
Hmmm. It would have to be someone who both represented USA to the world, and also pissed everybody off, wouldn’t it?
Can’t seem to recall his name right now though.
4 mlindroo // Sep 27, 2009 at 9:36 am
Michael Gerson hyperventilates:
> He accused America of acting “unilaterally, without regard for the interests of others” —
> a slander against every American ally who has made sacrifices in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As if George W. Bush and his cronies always had the utmost respect for the interests of their “coalition of the willing” partners, whenever it had a negative impact on U.S. interests:-) For example, Tony Blair got very few global policy concessions from the Bush Administration which is one reason why Labour was so furious.
—
Gerson, like any other neocon, is living in a total fantasy world. I’d guess that if you asked ordinary people in Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Canada etc. whether they agree with the statement that the GW Bush Administration in particular used to act “unilaterally, without regard for the interests of others”, 90% would agree.
MARCU$
5 oldgal // Sep 27, 2009 at 10:11 am
I notice that nowhere does he say any statement was untrue. Is form over substance really the way to go?
6 sinz54 // Sep 27, 2009 at 10:20 am
I understand how furious you Lefties are at Bush 43’s record.
But when representing America to the world, don’t you think it’s important to balance that with some positive things to say about America’s track record BEFORE the Bush 43 Administration?
The question is: Do you consider Bush 43 to be an aberration, or an examplar of America’s alleged historic sins?
Come on, Lefties. Surely you can think of some GOOD things America did in the world between 1789 and 2000?
I keep waiting for Obama to reiterate that part of America’s track record.
7 greg_barton // Sep 27, 2009 at 10:41 am
rbottoms:
It is, actually.
1) Criticize fellow conservatives, get pushed to the margins of your party.
2) Get noticed by folks on the left. They start reading your website.
3) Propose arguments you think might appeal to those on the left.
4) Try to persuade them to change their views rightward.
The argument also has a grain of truth for any politician, especially a president. You must have an inflated ego to run for any political office, especially the highest in the land.
Finally, trying the “Obama is a narcissist” serves another purpose as well. It’s projection of the faults of the right onto the left. The narcissism on the right is usually of the “God’s on our side,” or the “I’m right because I’m in charge” variety.
8 Derek // Sep 27, 2009 at 11:09 am
I thought Frum was trying to bring the intelligence back to conservatism. This type of analysis is more suited to Entertainment Tonight.
9 balconesfault // Sep 27, 2009 at 11:19 am
sinz: Come on, Lefties. Surely you can think of some GOOD things America did in the world between 1789 and 2000?
I keep waiting for Obama to reiterate that part of America’s track record.
From Obama’s Speech in Cairo:
The United States has been one of the greatest sources of progress that the world has ever known. We were born out of revolution against an empire. We were founded upon the ideal that all are created equal, and we have shed blood and struggled for centuries to give meaning to those words — within our borders, and around the world. We are shaped by every culture, drawn from every end of the Earth, and dedicated to a simple concept: E pluribus unum — “Out of many, one.”
10 rbottoms // Sep 27, 2009 at 1:47 pm
It must be some kind of ailment. An aphasia that causes the person to not be able to hear anything they don’t agree with.
The damaged part of the brain believes Obama hates America and its allies like Israel. So when Obama says this:
They hear:
11 sdspringy // Sep 27, 2009 at 3:18 pm
But does the Obama rhetoric actually follow Obama policy:
In a stunning departure from his rhetoric on Guantánamo Bay prison, President Barack Obama signaled Friday he will continue Bush Administration policy with regard to detainees held at a US airbase in Afghanistan, saying they have no right to challenge their detentions in US courts — and denying them legal status altogether.
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Obama_continues_Bush_policy_at_Afghan_0221.html
The best hope for transparency on torture cases, wiretapping cases, and a whole host of illegal Bush/Cheney conduct was for Obama to pull back on the previous policy of concealment via the assertion of state secrets. From the official press release of the ACLU, and their attorney Ben Wizner who argued the case this morning:
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/02/09/obama-continues-bush-policy-on-state-secrets/
The new administration has copied most of the Bush program, has expanded some of it, and has narrowed only a bit. Almost all of the Obama changes have been at the level of packaging, argumentation, symbol, and rhetoric. . .
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/05/19/obama/
While Obama continues to blame Bush for problems being experienced in the United States, he continues many of his orders, such as withholding the names of visitors to the White House. Now the President wants to hide the names of people who spend time with him in the Oval Office. What happened to his promise about transparency?
http://www.examiner.com/x-2547-Watchdog-Politics-Examiner~y2009m6d17-Obama-continues-Bush-policy-of-hiding-visitors-names
So while reading from the teleprompter about how wonderful he is, and how he has changed things, he actually is
A lot like Bush. Policy wise anyway.
So believe him all you want, just keep your eyes closed to who he really is. And what he is willing to do.
12 balconesfault // Sep 27, 2009 at 6:04 pm
sdspringy:
In a stunning departure from his rhetoric on Guantánamo Bay prison
Yes – Obama is such a dangerous leftist ideologue, that when faced with opposition from states to place Guantanamo prisoners in their Supermax Federal Prisons … he … backed down.
From the official press release of the ACLU, and their attorney Ben Wizner who argued the case this morning
Again – Obama the dangerous ideologue out to destroy America’s security. So much so that rather than carefully giving his Justice Department time to look through documents and information classified as state secrets by Bush – he immediately opened the books to all.
The new administration has copied most of the Bush program, has expanded some of it, and has narrowed only a bit. Almost all of the Obama changes have been at the level of packaging, argumentation, symbol, and rhetoric. .
I’m glad to see you reading Glenn Greenwald. He is one of the most serious civil libertarians in America, taking on the Obama Administration with the same intensity that he took on Bush. Would that anyone the Republican Party outside of Bob Barr had the same consistency, perhaps there wouldn’t be so much mess to clean up right now.
While Obama continues to blame Bush for problems being experienced in the United States, he continues many of his orders, such as withholding the names of visitors to the White House.
That decision was actually reversed a few weeks ago. Keep up.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/politicaljunkie/2009/09/obama_reverses_course_will_rel.html
13 mlindroo // Sep 27, 2009 at 6:36 pm
sdspringy wrote:
> A lot like Bush. Policy wise anyway.
> So believe him all you want, just keep your eyes closed to who he really is. And what he is willing to do.
So you do not believe Obama is a Marxist/Leninist hell-bent on destroying America and everything America stands for, then?
MARCU$
14 balconesfault // Sep 27, 2009 at 10:31 pm
So you do not believe Obama is a Marxist/Leninist hell-bent on destroying America and everything America stands for, then?
You haven’t been keeping up … now a lot of conservatives are arguing that Bush was really a liberal … soon he’ll be the Marxist/Leninist who was hell-bent on destroying America. Why else would Democrat Bob Bullock have supported Bush in 2000 … or Zell Miller in 2004? Clearly, Bush’s elections were all the Dems fault.
15 sinz54 // Sep 28, 2009 at 10:15 am
balconesfault:
I’ll repeat my question:
Why didn’t Obama name some SPECIFIC good things we did in the world, instead of his usual fluff which every skilled diplomat sitting there recognized was an attempt to avoid the question?
Because he sure had no trouble listing what he considered to be specific bad things: Acting unilaterally, being too selective in its promotion of democracy, etc. And was that really true THROUGHOUT our history, as he implied? He could have put a caveat in there that “In recent years, America has tended to act unilaterally….” Instead, he made it sound like America has acted unilaterally throughout its entire history. That’s totally false.
Obama should have reminded those U.N. delegates that the United Nations was the creation of the UNITED STATES–it was originally President FDR’s idea. That no nation on earth has done more to promote peace through collective security. We created the U.N., NATO, the Partnership for Peace, and many other treaties of collective security. We did NOT act unilaterally in Korea or the Gulf War–in both cases the U.N. authorized the use of military force, but only the U.S. had the military power to carry out that U.N. mandate. (How many times has the U.N. been able to authorize military force without the U.S. armed force being required?)
It’s pretty obvious from listing to lefties like Obama and his hard-core lefty supporters, that they regard the Bush 43 administration as different only in degree but not in kind from the general run of American history, about which they can find very few SPECIFIC things to be proud of.
16 balconesfault // Sep 28, 2009 at 10:27 am
Sinz:I’ll repeat my question:
Why didn’t Obama name some SPECIFIC good things we did in the world…
You may have thought that was your question … but what you really wrote was:
Surely you can think of some GOOD things America did in the world between 1789 and 2000?
I keep waiting for Obama to reiterate that part of America’s track record.
I think that “We were founded upon the ideal that all are created equal, and we have shed blood and struggled for centuries to give meaning to those words — within our borders, and around the world.” is a damn good summary of America’s track record.
Obama should have reminded those U.N. delegates that the United Nations was the creation of the UNITED STATES –it was originally President FDR’s idea.
From Obama’s address last week: This body was founded on the belief that the nations of the world could solve their problems together. Franklin Roosevelt, who died before he could see his vision for this institution become a reality, put it this way — and I quote: “The structure of world peace cannot be the work of one man, or one party, or one nation…. It cannot be a peace of large nations — or of small nations. It must be a peace which rests on the cooperative effort of the whole world….
Sixty-five years ago, a weary Franklin Roosevelt spoke to the American people in his fourth and final inaugural address. After years of war, he sought to sum up the lessons that could be drawn from the terrible suffering, the enormous sacrifice that had taken place. “We have learned,” he said, “to be citizens of the world, members of the human community.”
The United Nations was built by men and women like Roosevelt from every corner of the world — from Africa and Asia, from Europe to the Americas.
It seems your quibble is that Obama didn’t stand up in front of the General Assembly and tell them “the US built this institution, so STFU”.
about which they can find very few SPECIFIC things to be proud of.
You’re the one calling for specifics. Obama stated clear universal principles that the US has stood for, with the exception of the last 8 years.
17 sinz54 // Sep 28, 2009 at 10:30 am
mlindroo:
But the beauty of our system of government is that mistakes can be corrected by the voters.
Bush is out of office, the Republican who planned to succeed him (McCain) lost decisively to Obama, who promised a very different course. And the voters elected him a Democratic Congress to work with. That suggests something about the American system that beats what typically happens in Latin America or the Third World, the bulk of the nations in the U.N.
Finally, as I keep pointing out, while the Left used Bush as a boogeyman while he was in office (and even now), the hard-core worldwide Left never had ANY kind things to say about America during the Clinton, Bush 41, Reagan, or even Carter administrations (when they ran a third-party candidate, Anderson), either.
I lived through those adminstrations, and the vituperative attacks on my country from the worldwide Left never, ever ceased. From them you’ve gotten nothing but a steady stream of denunciations: America has done THIS thing wrong in the world. America has done THAT wrong. America is racist. America is imperialist. America is fascist. America launches “illegal” wars. (The Left thinks every war the U.S. has fought since World War II is “illegal.”) On and on and on. Listening to them, you would think that the United States is the most consistently evil, oppressive, and unjust nation in world history.
Guess what. It’s mostly the opposite.
And it falls to we conservatives to keep having to defend America from such attacks, when its own left-wing citizens won’t.
When Osama bin Laden yells “Death to America!,” I wonder how many lefties in San Francisco and Vermont nod in agreement.
18 balconesfault // Sep 28, 2009 at 10:43 am
the hard-core worldwide Left never had ANY kind things to say about America during the Clinton, Bush 41, Reagan, or even Carter administrations (when they ran a third-party candidate, Anderson)
Wait – you’re saying that John Anderson was a hard-core Lefty?
19 balconesfault // Sep 28, 2009 at 10:47 am
When Osama bin Laden yells “Death to America!,” I wonder how many lefties in San Francisco and Vermont nod in agreement.
I really didn’t expect to be saying this to you, Sinz … but you’re an idiot.
It makes me very sad to have to say that.
20 sinz54 // Sep 28, 2009 at 12:36 pm
balconesfault:
The following was written on September 20, 2001–just nine days after the 9-11 attack:
And this was written by Michael Walzer of “Dissent” Magazine, in early 2002:
21 sinz54 // Sep 28, 2009 at 12:40 pm
balconesfault:
I stand corrected. I had forgotten that Obama had put those words about FDR in his speech.
I was wrong.
22 Newbigtech // Sep 28, 2009 at 12:55 pm
The problem is that OBAMA is doing exactly as he stated he would when he was running for the office.
And believe me he has accomplished more in his first months in office than was accomplished by the last administration .
I may not like all that he is for, Everett Dirksen told me he didn’t agree with everything LBJ did either.
But who is president and who is in Congress.
If there are better idea’s let them come forth! If there are better plans, let them be presented.
Where are the REPUBLICAN leaders in all this?
You can’t sit back and let radicals like Limbaugh and Beck run amuck with the conservative party!
Clowns can not run the circus….
Where are the better idea’s?
23 Oneon1isto // Sep 28, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Is anyone not impressed with Obama’s current handling on Iran? He extends a hand to the Muslim world, they nod their heads and agree. He extends a hand to Iran, they slap it away. Then he drops the evidence showing they have another secret nuclear facility right smack dab in the middle of the world during the UN conference, immediately after he leads the Council to agree on new Nuclear Non-Proliferation agreement. That is not narcissism, that is cold, hard, badass diplomacy people.
How is this not more effective than the saber-rattling and posturing of the previous administration? This is diplomacy at it’s best. Make your enemy look evil and manipulative, and make yourself look like a saint.
24 balconesfault // Sep 28, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Make your enemy look evil and manipulative, and make yourself look like a saint.
Yep – he’s doing to the Iranians what he did to Hillary, and then McCain/Palin.
If we’re going to stablize the world without doubling our defense budget again (which some here would like to do, I think) Obama’s tactics have the best chance of success, I think.
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