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Obama is typical of a lot of people on college campuses. They have their view of the world and stick to it in the face of evidence to the contrary. Their vision of the world is too appealing and the feeling that they created it themselves is too strong for them to ever relinquish it.

I guess that is a form of narcissism. But "malignant narcissistic personality disorder" probably goes too far. Take the arrogance of an academic and add the arrogance of a politician and a highly competitive environment that doesn't have much room for other people's feelings and you've got Barack Obama, different in degree from others in politics, but perhaps not in kind.

The funny thing about academia is that while it claims to be more worldly or cosmopolitan or internationalist than the rest of the country, its villains are usually at home. It doesn't have much of a sense of the dangers that come from outside the comfortable Western realm. Obama would like to lecture the country about the world outside, but his own view is sheltered and provincial and in many ways naive.