Hillarysworld

Read @ RCP

October 14, 2010

Obama's Arrogance Starting to Get Noticed

By Jonah Goldberg

‘That's all right, all of you know who I am," President Obama joked last week when the presidential seal fell off his podium during a speech in Pittsburgh.

Even though the incident made headlines for no discernible journalistic reason, it was noteworthy as a succinct example of Obama's arrogance problem. Rather than make a self-deprecating joke, he opted to make a self-inflating one, as if to say that the title mattered less than the man.

The good news is that it's apparently not racist to call Obama arrogant anymore.

[SNIP]

And here's Time's Mark Halperin: "With the exception of core Obama administration loyalists, most politically engaged elites have reached the same conclusion: The White House is in over its head, isolated, insular, arrogant and clueless about how to get along with or persuade members of Congress, the media, the business community or working-class voters."

Halperin's diagnosis was inevitable, given Obama's conviction that he represented a movement that was larger than politics or even the presidency. After all, this was the man who, as a candidate, descended on Berlin as the leader of a worldwide cause that transcended national borders. And when asked in a debate what his greatest weakness was, he plumbed his soul and answered that he was disorganized. "My desk and my office doesn't look good," he said. When a man runs as a national redeemer and says his biggest failing is a messy desk, that should be a warning sign that he likes himself a bit too much.

Of course, all presidents have healthy egos. You cannot become president, or even think you're qualified to run, if you don't think highly of yourself. Obama's arrogance problem isn't a matter of psychology but of strategy.

[SNIP]

There's an irony to occupying the Oval Office. When presidents think they're bigger than the job they hold, they shrink in office. When they think they're smaller than the honor that has temporarily been bestowed upon them, they grow into it. Obama has done nothing but shrink.

[SNIP]

It never dawns on him that were it not for the unseriousness of those voters, he might still be a one-term junior senator from Illinois.

"You know, I actually believe my own bull-," Obama told the author of Renegade: The Making of a President, Richard Wolffe.

Exactly. And that's why he's gotten into this mess.  (Emphasis added)

Full article @ RCP

==========================

I agree with most of what is in this article.    [The part about the POTUS complaining abotu Karl Rove -- I'll mark that off as whining and not as ego.]

The humongous ego was visible all along...  And now even those with lovey-dovey eyes for the candidate cannot help but acknowledge that the size of the ego is bigger than the shoes in which the head walks.

And, yes, it was the unseriousness of the voters and their willingness to follow whoever said the word hope like a herd of sheep that got him elected.

And, yes, a big ego believing its own rhetoric gets itself into serious mess as the POTUS may soon discover, if not already. But will he know that his ego is what is causing a lot of it? 

It does NOT reduce a person to consult with others on their viewpoint and their approach.  It is only because he has big ego but not sufficient confidence nor sufficient capability to balance it that he is having such issues that he cannot INVOLVE and LISTEN to others. 

Everyone has ego.  It is when the capability does not match that big ego that the issues arise... and manifest themselves in forceful imposition of their dogma on others.  involving others instead could very easily make them followers of the leadership approach.



-- Edited by Sanders on Friday 15th of October 2010 12:26:49 AM