Clinton, Obama and the Narcissist's Tale

Washington Post ^ | April 29th, 2008 | Shankar Vedantam

[The_Republican]

Put yourself in the shoes of Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. You are widely seen by Democratic voters as a transformational presidential candidate. Democrats are nearly evenly divided between you and your competitor, and you think you are the best candidate for your party -- and the one more likely to beat Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in November. Your supporters passionately believe you ought to win the race.

The longer the race goes on, however, the more bitter it becomes. Increasing numbers of your supporters say they will never support your competitor. And growing numbers of Democrats, once excited at the prospect of two extraordinary candidates, are turned off by all the negativity. What should you do? Pulling out of the race means giving up your dream -- when you think you are the better choice. Staying in risks collective disaster.

The fault line in this dilemma -- the interests of a candidate pitted against the collective interest of his or her party -- shows up in many economic and political domains and is sometimes called the "tragedy of the commons." Individuals embroiled in similar dilemmas find them impossible to solve on their own, because they are confronted by a Hobson's Choice: Act selfishly and cause collective disaster, or act altruistically and aid someone else who is acting selfishly. Either way, selfishness wins.

"The way the system is set up, the more-selfish person has a higher probability of winning," social psychologist W. Keith Campbell said of the Democratic primary. "You end up with the more narcissistic, belligerent candidate."

Campbell once conducted an experiment that tested the same fault line. He asked volunteers to play the role of timber companies in a forest.

[Dilbert San Diego]

Well, let’s buy more popcorn as we watch this unfold. It’s going to be hard for the Dems. to be unified behind their candidate.

Hillary and Bill thought they would have wrapped it up by Feb. 5th Super Tuesday. If they had, the Dems. probably would be unified now behind Hillary. If nothing else, this campaign has showed that the Clintons are not loved by many Democrats, and that even lots of Democrats have “Clinton fatigue” and are turned off by them.

[uncbob]

"The way the system is set up, the more-selfish person has a higher probability of winning," social psychologist W. Keith Campbell said of the Democratic primary. "You end up with the more narcissistic, belligerent candidate."

In this case there are other factors at stake ---like the black base the dems absolutely have to keep--this has to be giving the supers fits

[Henchster]

"The way the system is set up, the more-selfish person has a higher probability of winning," social psychologist W. Keith Campbell said of the Democratic primary. "You end up with the more narcissistic, belligerent candidate."

Well, that FINALLY explains how we ended up with Obama, Clinton, and McCain.

[Twinkie]

It gets very tiresome hearing McCain skewer President Bush over this and over that. He was condemning him last night on something or the other on t.v. about the handling of the New Orleans disaster and swore that under him, nothing like that would ever happen again. Instead of recognizing the rescuers and others who struggled to help and rescue the people of New Orleans and questioning the lack of action by Nagin and the blubbering Governor of Louisiana, he once again, spewed in President Bush’s face and in the face of those making monumental efforts in an overwhelming disaster
that no one, NOT EVEN MCCAIN, could have magically fixed.

The Democrats are already putting out the vicious commercials on McCain. What a revolting development this is.