jdwill –

I’m considering the possibility Obama is a true empath. The portrayals as professor, teacher, analyst, even cynical politician don’t really satisfy me about him. When he turns each social question on two sides repeatedly, what may be in operation is a need to be inside all parties to the question. I think what really what seems to set him apart is empathy for the other. Not phony like Clinton, but internally driven. His inability to address a mistake flows from this as well, you just didn’t hear him as he morphed to absorb the error and convert it.

Oh, my, you really have the essence of Obama turned on its head. Far from being an empath, he is, as Spengler correctly pegged him, a sociopath — one who “seeks the empathy of all around him while sympathizing with no one.”  He can make people believe that he agrees with them, no matter what their beliefs are — while possessing no empathy whatsoever. Are you perhaps so young that you’ve never met someone like this personally?  A charming someone who you come away from saying “Wow! They totally understood me and my feelings.” But a month later, after having gotten your vote or some other payoff, and thus have no more need of you, don’t even recognize you when you meet again?

It might be argued that all politicians have sociopathic tendencies, but a true sociopath such as Obama is hampered by a sense of entitlement and  thus unable to transfer his appeal to those who are innately skeptical of this personality type — mainstream America. And therein lies his problem.