High Drama Obama
The whole “No Drama Obama” theory, one that so enamored the media during the economic turmoil leading up to the election, is proving troublesome today. It seems that what we really have is “No Emotion Obama.” Charles Krauthammer explains as well as anyone could:
I think if you look back over the last two weeks, what is so surprising and so unsettling is not the individual lapses, the missed information here and there. I think it’s the demeanor and the language of the president, a sense people have that he’s disconnected.
He doesn’t either want to or [is able to] grasp the nature or depth of the threat. The way he waits three days after the attack to say anything . . . casually dressed, looking like he resents being taken off the golf course.
He speaks about [the incident] as if he’s giving a police report, speaks about the incident involving a suspect, an alleged attack, he speaks of him as an isolated extremist. . . .
And it took him the fifth attempt in the remarks he made yesterday to actually use the term, “we are at war” and to make it sound as if he believes it. . . .
The Bush administration allowed the attack of Richard Reid, which we were lucky it didn’t actually succeed. It can happen to any administration, a lapse here and there. But a disconnected and detached and affectless president is rather disturbing, and that’s why I think that the reaction is extremely unsettled.
I think it’s a bit more complicated than simply observing “calm versus creepily disaffected.” To explain, I’m going to take a detour into my youth.
When I was growing up, we had a family friend who was always delightful to be around because she brought such vividness to every event in her life. Every experience she had was larger than life, and her language and affect when describing these experiences were larger than life too. She didn’t meet “a tall man, who was at least 6’6″ tall.” Instead, body practically quivering as she spoke, she met “the biggest man I’ve ever seen. He could barely squeeze through the doorway. I saw ice crystals forming on his head because of the altitude.” Being around her was exciting. We called her a “Drama Queen” because she was so dramatic.
My Mom was the opposite — a much more prosaic person, who would simply describe a tall man as being, well, tall. I loved (and still love) conversing with my mom, because she is an interesting, informed person, with a nice sense of humor. If asked, though, I would have said of her “No Drama.”
I’m thirty years older now, and I’ve come to completely reverse my sense of those two ladies. My Mom’s friend may have had a flair for the dramatic, but she was no drama queen. She was not self-involved or hysterical. Instead, she was a hard-headed pragmatist, who had a knack for colorful communication.
My Mom, on the other hand, turns out to have been, all along, a true drama queen. It was she who gloried in every depressing news story, who went into a high altitude, but low volume panic when she misplaced her keys or glasses (daily occurrences), who reacted to every cold as if it was a life-threatening pneumonia, etc. Anything that affected her, or resonated with her, got the full emotional treatment, but in a quiet, almost plodding way, that disguised the fact that she was manipulating people around her by articulating, at a ridiculous level, her fears and worries. (Incidentally, I’ve always cut my Mom huge slack for her acting out the drama of her life. She had a pretty bad life, and if she wanted to bring emotional drama to lost keys, that was her right. Fortunately, though, as I got older, I remained sympathetic but became harder to manipulate.)
What I’ve realized, is that a drama queen is someone who sees his or her own emotions and experiences in a heightened manner, and who uses that emotional altitude to manipulate others. This doesn’t require the person to be obviously dramatic, as my mom’s gifted friend was. It does require, however, a fairly high degree of narcissism, or otherwise the person would not see him or herself as the center of everyone else’s emotional universe.
Which gets me back to our President. What we’ve learned over the year of his presidency is that, when matters affect him, he is snippy, crude, insulting, vindictive and generally emotionally involved. Often the matters that trigger this behavior are extremely trivial. This is the drama queen side of this narcissist. He can’t role with the punches when it comes to slights to his ego. Those cause a high level emotional reaction in him, and we see it. (A lovely recent example was his high dudgeon when the Chinese premier slighted him in Copenhagen.) The other side to this man iis that, since his own emotional needs are the only thing that trigger his drama, he is chillingly affect-free when an event doesn’t directly involve him. This explains his casual, remote demeanor when discussing the Christmas Day bomber. He acted as if he didn’t care, because he really didn’t care. It wasn’t about him. When it became about him — that is, about his bizarre response — suddenly he became emotionally engaged and started trying to backpedal.
Peggy Noonan has wondered whether a 2010 Republican sweep will have the paradoxical effect of saving Obama’s presidency. After all, back in 1994, Bill Clinton took the slap in the face the voters gave him and completely changed his style of governance. The reward was a second term. I don’t think that’s going to happen with Obama. Clinton’s narcissism took the path of a desperate need for love, whether from the electorates or the interns. He would do anything to keep people happy with him. Obama’s narcissism is of an entirely different order. The only thing that matters is himself. He is always right, and everyone who disagrees with him is always wrong. If the voters slap back in 2010, Obama will not respond by bending to their will. Instead, he will take it personally, and react vindictively, not cooperatively. Then we’ll start seeing some real drama.
