January 10, 2006 at 15:25:47

Narcissism, the public, and the President

SAVE AS FAVORITE

VIEW FAVORITES

By Stephen Soldz (about the author) Page 2 of 3 page(s)

opednews.com Permalink

"Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes"
I am very leery of making diagnoses via long-distance of people I have never met. Additionally, I am well aware that one must be skeptical of much "information" publicly available about major political leaders as this information is carefully filtered through the lens of PR manipulation designed to create desired images among the public. Furthermore, one must remember that a large degree of narcissism is common, perhaps even necessary in leaders who rise to presidential level. It is certainly hard for someone who is not convinced of their special qualities to have the drive, determination, and desire to undergo all that is required to get the position.

Despite these caveats, it is striking to compare what we apparently know about President Bush's character with these criteria. This exercise is not undertaken to assign a clinical diagnosis to the President or to assign labels as a sophisticated form of character assassination. Rather, it can be used as an indicator of his personality, of long-standing tendencies to think, feel, and behave in characteristic ways, regardless of whether such a personality is a clinical problem. And President Bush's personality, because of its potential effects on many Americans and much of humankind, is an important object of study.

Without denying the importance of national and class interests in the formulation of policy or endorsing the great man theory of history, understanding George W. Bush's personality may shine light on certain aspects of his administration's actions and on his appeal to the American public at this moment in history. Whatever material and strategic goals undergird this administration's foreign policies, it seems incontestable that these goals have been pursued in a manner that prevented their realization, indeed, in a manner that, as predicted by many mainstream commentators and former policy-makers sharing similar goals, had catastrophic results. When a former National Security Agency director describes the Iraq war as the greatest strategic blunder in American history, consideration of psychological factors contributing to the blunder hardly seems out of place. And when much of the public follows the blundering leader over the precipice, it seems appropriate to examine the attractions of that leader.

Given President Bush's quite modest prior achievements, including his numerous failures at business opportunities that were handed to him on a silver plate, there is little to suggest that he is outstanding in any characteristic other than ability to get elected. He certainly lacks much knowledge of international relations that would seem to be an essential perquisite for taking risky major decisions that modify long-standing American and international policies and alliances. Yet he appears to view himself as a Commander-In Chief for the ages.

Given the private nature of the fantasies described in the second criterion, it is hard to know if he is "preoccupied" with these grandiose fantasies. Yet, his apparent messianic mission to bring "democracy" to the Middle East, an area where wiser heads, however imperial their desires, have feared to tread, along with his reported comments suggesting that God speaks to him directly, suggest that Bush does indeed harbor grandiose fantasies of virtually unlimited success.

One also might wonder about Bush's repeated admiration for the ease of dictatorship, expressed, according to Wikiquote, on at least three occasions [July 1998, December 18, 2000, and July 26, 2001] years apart. A typical quote is this one from December 18, 2000: "If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier... just so long as I'm the dictator." One certainly could infer a wish for the unlimited power of the dictator. Of course this was said in jest, but humor oft repeated often provides illumination into the character and desires of the teller.

Bush's behavior has often suggested that he has a sense of entitlement and feels that he is special and that he should be treated special. He got out of exposure to combat in Vietnam by having his family pull strings -- something about which he even boasted -- while steadfastly supporting the war in which tens of thousands of other less privileged Americans and countless Vietnamese died. He apparently sees himself as uniquely endowed to make decisions of life and death, of which laws he will obey and which he will ignore, of which congressional representatives or journalists he will deign to acknowledge and which he will ignore. The extraordinary lack of accountability of his administration is due, in part, to Bush's sense that he is accountable to no one. The Presidential attitude toward torture, of publicly proclaiming his right to order it whenever he feels like it (as opposed to authorizing it in shameful secrecy like past presidents) also suggests a sense of divine destiny of proportions extreme even for presidents. The recent NSA eavesdropping scandal also, unusually, involves a deliberate public boasting of his right to break laws (over 30 times) with a sense of total impunity. The extent to which his administration has gone to protect the President from any exposure, however fleeting, to protesters and dissidents suggests a Presidential antipathy to any challenge to his authority.

As for his need for excessive admiration, his surrounding himself with sycophants like Harriet Miers, who evidently once claimed that Bush was "was the most brilliant man she had ever met." and Condoleezza Rice, who is known for never challenging Bush, is certainly suggestive evidence.

In considering empathy, or its lack, Bush's career is full of illustrations, like the comments above to wounded vets, or his complete uninterest in the suffering caused by Hurricane Katrina until it became a potential political liability. And who can forget his mocking of Karla Faye Tucker's plea for Bush to commute her death sentence: "Please," Bush whimpered, his lips pursed in mock desperation, "please, don't kill me."

Envy is the one symptom for which I am aware of no obvious evidence. When it comes to arrogance, I don't need to even mention the evidence, though those horrid sneers he routinely exhibits in public cannot go unnoted.

We thus have extensive evidence of narcissistic tendencies in the President. [I want to state again that I am not assigning a diagnosis to him, but am claiming he exhibits certain personality characteristics.] To a degree, much of what is said of this president could be said about many others, and other top leaders as well. Grandiosity, arrogance, and, to a degree, a sense of entitlement, seem to pretty much go with the territory.

Evident to an unusual degree for a top American leader, however, is Bush's lack of empathy. He seems, to an extreme degree, to genuinely not have a clue what other people, especially those less fortunate in life, are experiencing, nor does he have any interest. There is no evidence that the potential inappropriateness of his joking about his scratches to severely injured veterans might be insensitive, just as there is no evidence that he has ever cared about the tens of thousands of those wounded as a result of his commands. No one has ever claimed that Bush called in Secretary Rumsfeld and said "What are you doing to reduce the casualties. Where the hell is that armor?" [I concentrate on President Bush's obliviousness to American casualties not because I don't value equally the tens to hundreds of thousands of dead and injured Iraqis, but because it is a sad fact of statecraft that "enemy" casualties seldom weigh on any leader in wartime. But many wartime leaders do feel the weight of casualties on their own side.]

Similarly, there is no evidence that Bush weighed his role or gave even a moment's thought as Karla Faye Tucker awaited execution. He made not even a pretense of wrestling with the decision, perhaps because he could not imagine that others might expect him to exhibit an awareness of the magnitude of this life-and-death decision, regardless of whether he ultimately went ahead with the execution.

Bush's Narcissism and the Public

For President Bush, his narcissism has been a source of political strength. A large fraction of the American public has been attracted to a leader who appeared to genuinely not care what others think. Who among us never wished we could say "the others be damned" and do whatever we wanted? While most of us don't dare act on these wishes, a narcissistic leader can provide us with vicarious satisfaction. As a nation, we won't let others impede us, not the weak untrustworthy French nor the United Nations that always wants to negotiate and compromise rather than just act. People perceive Bush's narcissism as a source of strength when strength is conceived as the ability to impose his/our will on others.

This dynamic is in addition to, in fact may even be in conflict with, the oft commented upon sense of safety provided by a strong leader. For, at least one version of a strong leader is modeled on the caring father who will do anything that needs to be done to protect the family/nation. The narcissistic leader, however, does not care about the needs or desires of others, of the nation's public, but only of his own. Just as with an abusive self-absorbed parent, citizens can defensively delude themselves into believing that a narcissistic leader cares about them. The defensive nature of this belief lends it a fragility and hence a rigidity requiring active defense from potential criticism.

1 | 2 | 3

http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/blog/

Stephen Soldz is psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health researcher, and faculty member at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He is co-founder of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology (more...)

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.