Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.
Euripides, Greek tragic dramatist (484 BC - 406 BC)
There has been a tremendous amount of discussion of the Obama administration's assault on Fox News. Yesterday, they took the battle to a new level by their failed attempt to excommunicate Fox News:
In its mindless war against Fox, the White House tried to ban Fox News from the White House press pool that was to interview the “pay czar,” Kenneth Feinberg. (Yes, it was a nice touch of imperial irony that the effort to cut off access to a particular news outlet came in the context of an interview of an administrative official who is not subject to congressional confirmation or oversight and whose job it is to dictate compensation rules to private firms that were bullied into taking government bailouts.) The mainstream media’s collective spine stiffened, and the administration was forced to back down.
The MSM should be commended for showing some solidarity with their colleagues at Fox. As Jennifer Rubin noted in the body of her post, the administration's behavior is troubling for a number of reasons:
This is hugely revealing for several reasons. First, the administration is digging in and doubling down even though its conduct has invited scorn from pundits of every political persuasion and become the object of ridicule. The belligerence is remarkable and suggests that the White House behaves in illogical and self-destructive ways. (Attention pundits: stop looking for rational explanations for the Obamis’ irrational behavior.)
Second, the administration is doing the impossible — offending the mainstream press and forcing some of Fox’s toughest critics to ride to its defense. Nice work, fellas.
Third, it’s disturbing that at a time when we still lack a strategy decision on Afghanistan, unemployment is sky high, and health-care reform is in disarray, this is what consumes the White House. For an administration that was supposed to transcend petty partisanship, it has become, yes, the spitting image of the Nixon White House — defensive, vengeful, and self-destructive.
It’s a cringe-inducing moment, both for those who oppose the White House on policy grounds and those who cheer its every move. As surely as Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton allowed their personal flaws to erode the office of the presidency, Obama seems bent on allowing his own flaws (thin-skinnedness, hubris) to do potentially grave damage to the office as well.
The analogy to Richard Nixon, whose preoccupation with his political enemies verged on paranoia and whose indulgence of his insecurities destroyed his Presidency is warranted and of great concern. This episode tells us a great deal about the character of our President.
One of the basic tenets of the model of the mind that has been constructed through 100 years of work in Psychoanalysis is that the mind contains a multitude of conflicting impulses, some positive, some negative. Among those impulses are many completely unacceptable impulses that we normally inhibit, including self-destructive impulses which often emerge in well disguised ways.
[It is not a coincidence that much of the output of the highest cortical levels of the brain are inhibitory of the lower levels. In other words, in order to behave rationally, we need to inhibit our irrational impulses. An infant acts when he has an impulses. If he is hungry, he screams; if he feels an urge to move his bowels, he moves his bowels. He does not care where he is or if his behavior is acceptable at the moment. These are things he must learn in order to be civilized. When he learns them well, he becomes a civilized, decent human being. Those who learn to inhibit their impulses less effectively may have difficulty modulating their aggressive and libidinal desires, usually with problematic outcomes.]
Recently we have been treated to the public self-immolation of a number of rich and powerful people. Perhaps the classic blend of hubris, unregulated desire, and self destruction seen most recently was embodied by the former governor of New York. When we fail to appreciate the potential outcomes of surrendering to our desires, or when we believe that we are immune to consequences, we make the likelihood of disaster much greater. Eliot Spitzer was a politician with a great deal of money and power and felt himself to be above the law. He most likely had a relatively unmetabolized grandiose self as part of his character (a form of enhanced narcissism, possibly innate, possibly acquired with his easy success.) Such a politician may believe he can flaunt the laws he enacted (eg, money laundering) and pleasure himself with attractive young prostitutes and never worry about consequences. It is not hard to see the self destructive core in Eliot Spitzer's behavior.
The picture of Barack Obama that is emerging from the first year of his Presidency is that of an overtly arrogant man who believes his own press, ie, a man who contains some unmetabolized grandiosity. He is intolerant of criticism and experiences criticism as an attack. There is no way to know how much of this behavior is fueled by character issues and how much emerges from a (poorly) calculated political posture. Certainly, it is "the Chicago Way" to demonize opponents and reward supporters and a case can be made that the inexperienced Chicago politicians in Washington DC simply have failed to recognize that such an approach works poorly in national politics where so many fancy themselves to be so smart, crafty, and powerful. A little finesse works better in Washington than a lot of overt pressure. In many ways this is the best case scenario because it suggests that Barack Obama and those around him do not have a characterological inability to learn from their mistakes but rather can eventually adopt a more Machiavellian approach to getting parts of their agenda enacted.
On the other hand, if their behavior reflects the character of the President and those around him (and the evidence unfortunately points in that direction at the moment) here is considerable cause for worry. In such a case, Obama's poorly contained anger can lead him to make errors of judgement which are consequential. Further, those who cannot tolerate criticism cannot learn from their mistakes. They believe that all criticism is based on a personal repudiation and animus and as a result, never hear the content of the criticism. As a result those who criticize them become enemies who must be crushed in order to remove the stain on their escutcheon.
Richard Nixon developed an enemies list because he had many genuine enemies but could never differentiate between personal enemies and political opponents. He allowed his preoccupation with his enemies to define and destroy his Presidency. There was no one among his trusted inner circle to tell him that he was veering into dangerous and self destructive territory. That is the danger for Barack Obama and the country. He does not appear able to differentiate personal enemies and political opponents and there is little reason to believe any of his closest advisers recognize the danger. An isolated, effectively paranoid President is not something the country can afford at this time. Let us hope that the MSM refusal to continue to go along with every excess of the Obama administration is taken as a bit of friendly criticism rather than a tactical maneuver or temporary setback, or worse, a personal attack. If the Obama administration fails to learn from this episode, we will be left hoping that someone can intervene before too long.
Note well that the Nixon comparison is becoming widespread, and that Nixon's administration didn't end well:
There was one MSM reporter who sees an ominous connection between the psychology of this administration and one long passed into history
How do you know that the White House's anti-Fox News campaign has gone seriously wrong? When CNN, let alone Anderson Cooper, begins to compare the Obama and Nixon administrationsAs I recall the Nixon thing didn't end well. Nixon was forced to resign and his Vice President, Spiro Agnew, was convicted on corruption charges. Leaving Gerald Ford to baby sit the country until Jimmy "incompetent" Carter's election.
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