Is Barak Obama a Manchurian Marxist or merely a narcissist on the make?
Every patriotic American should hope that the essential Barack Obama is, as the author suggests, a narcissistic redo of Bill Clinton because the alternative means that we have leftist ideologue in the most powerful position in the world whose motives border on treason. There is a third possibility, namely the Barak Obama is merely what he shows the world that he is, a left of center liberal with conventional notions that big government is needed to solve big problems.
In arguing for the Bill Clinton model, the author argues entirely by analogy. Argument by analogy may be persuasive but it is not cogent. To count up the parallels between the two biographies and conclude that they are both narcissists and will govern according to the same mold because they come from broken homes or because of their wives are lawyers is just fatuous. The argument has to be, they are this kind of men because they came from this kind of broken home and because they are this kind of men they will govern this way. Their broken homes make them narcissists and, because they are narcissist, they will govern as opportunists.
The problem with this kind of argument by analogy is that it is simply unscientific. Many men come from broken homes, endure similar biographies as these two, and do not become narcissists. Take a look at Winston Churchill's background, it would psychologically scar anybody, it might have made him solipsistic, but he did not govern that way. Abraham Lincoln's youth of deprivation and isolation, not to mention his relationship with his father, would lead one to suppose he should be counted a narcissist. But he was not and he certainly did not govern that way. Each man is rightly revered for his courage against all odds-hardly the characteristic of a narcissist.
This business of psychoanalyzing politicians is treacherous. When done by analogy it is entirely unpersuasive. It smacks of Rush Limbaugh's satirizing the numerology of Louis Farrakhan. I think it is is far more productive to get out of these swamps and look at what the subject actually does and says.
Here is where this business gets Kafka-like. If Barak Obama truly is narcissistic, it is pointless to look at anything he says because he is by definition a consummate liar and a deft manipulator. Certainly no one would dispute the truth of that as it applies to Bill Clinton; not even leftist Joe Klein who caught it early on when he wrote, anonymously, Primary Colors which is a paen of grudging admiration for the master manipulator even as he manipulated the author. A narcissist who denies his narcissism is merely playing out his neurosis.
The law has a presumption which might be of use here. When a party makes an admission against his own interest that admission is thought to be reliable. So if Barak Obama tells us that he is not a socialist, the denial is not worth much and would not be worth much even if he were not a narcissist. But when Barak Obama tells Joe the Plummer in an unguarded moment that the nation's wealth should be redistributed, that is an admission against his interest in appearing to be centrist and it is highly credible. Likewise his admission that higher taxes do not increase revenues but are nevertheless desirable because they redistribute wealth, should be regarded as very revealing.
Of course the safest method of analysis is to ignore what the candidates say on their own behalf and look at what the hell they do. Obama's biography betrays at every turn that he is a Manchurian Marxist. His profound associations have been with communists from his mentor Frank Marshall Davis to William Ayres. He made another admission against interest in his biography when he admitted that he associated with Marxists on campus. His associations include long and intimate attachment to the Black Liberation Theology preacher, Rev. Wright. This is simply a black face on Marxism.
His record in the Illinois Senate and in the United States Senate as an extreme leftist confirms his biography. Since entering the Oval Office I know of nothing that I can think of domestically that President Barak Obama has done which is not consistent with the thesis that he is a Marxist. His record on foreign affairs is more mixed and less conclusive but I think that if one regards his apparent moves to the right in, for example, Afghanistan as moves to protect his own existing power rather than ideological shifts to the right, the Marxist model still fits. In other words, American impotence abroad is one thing if one is a leftist seeking power and quite another thing if one is a leftist already in power.
I think the real question is how committed a Marxist is Barak Obama? Is he so rabid an acolyte of the Saul Alinsky School that he will actively contrive a crisis to seize ultimate power? Or will he will he merely govern on the left but seize an opportunity only if circumstances serendipitously offer?
In other words, so long as we continue as we are I think our representative democracy will survive Obama. My fear is that we will have a profound financial crash with huge unemployment numbers; or we will experience a wave of the Weimar Republic like inflation which destroys virtually every institution; or we sustain a severe or series of severe terrorist strikes; or there is an atomic attack somewhere in the world; or the Iranians or some other crazies, possibly possessed of the bomb, possibly in league with Russia and/or Venezuela, manage to shut off the world supply of oil; or there are assassinations in America.
An event like one of these could be the occasion for Obama to seize ultimate power. I believe he is psychologically prepared to do so but I cannot be sure. If he were to do so, the grab would be rationalized as a move to save the country and an opportunity to finally put the country right. I believe he is psychologically ready to do so because he is a leftist and a God player and an acolyte of Saul Alinsky. This is what the Frankfurt School and the Alinsky School have been striving for without respite for decades.
It is hard to believe that if Obama is offered the ultimate prize that he would walk away like Cincinnatus or Washington.
