“How Obama’s media strategy unraveled with recovered POW,” is explored by John Podhoretz in the New York Post, who asks, “What happens when the world’s greatest spin doctor commits malpractice — on himself?”
That is the question that now bedevils Barack Obama after what have been, without a doubt, the worst weeks of his presidency.
From the Veterans Administration scandal to the jaw-dropping events surrounding the swap of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the man with the most remarkable intuitive grasp of how to preserve and enhance his own image the world has ever seen has now tarnished it almost beyond recognition.
Who would have expected such a development? From the speech in 2004 that made him a rising star through the campaign in 2008 that made him president, Obama was the most formidable political propagandist of all time.
Read the whole thing. As long as he was selling himself as Savior To Be, and could point to others — George Bush, Hillary and Bill Clinton, John McCain and Sarah Palin, and eventually, a GOP Congress — as lesser politicians and strawmen to be knocked down and insulted, Obama was fine. But sooner or later, all elected politicians must govern. And the Bergdahl debacle was entirely of his own administration’s making.
Speaking of spin control unraveling, the man who was compared by his abetters in the MSM overculture in 2008 and 2009 to not just FDR, JFK and Lincoln, but to Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, James Bond, and God Himself, was revealed this past week to actually be a scrawny middle-aged man using tiny beginners’ weights in a Marriott hotel gym in Warsaw. As Ace wrote on Wednesday:
A normal person doing normal things usually wouldn’t be that funny.
But Obama has worked hard at only two things during his presidency: Image Control, and Not Working.
It’s amusing to see the sad little man behind the giant face of Oz.
Image control combined with what our Maximum Pajamahadeen Emeritus described as “Moral Narcissism” personified. On Thursday, Roger L. Simon wrote:
Moral Narcissism is an evocative term for the almost schizophrenic divide between intentions and results now common in our culture. It doesn’t matter how anything turns out as long as your intentions are good. And, just as importantly, the only determinant of those intentions, the only one who defines them, is you.
In other words, if you propose or do something, it only matters that you feel good or righteous about what you did or are proposing, that it makes you feel better personally. The results are irrelevant, as are how the actual activity affects others.
Also, although it pretends (especially to the self) to altruism, moral narcissism is in essence passive aggressive, asserting superiority over the ignorant or “selfish” other. It is elitist, anti-democratic and quote often, consciously or unconsciously, sadistic.
The Obama administration is loaded with moral narcissists, including, obviously, the president himself — Valerie Jarrett, Susan Rice, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton etc. The media and Hollywood are also clearly stuffed to the gills with moral narcissists.
And so many of the quotes Obama has uttered over the years fit that definition perfectly. In 2012, a Red State diarist rounded up “Barack Obama’s 20 Most Impossibly Self-Absorbed Moments.” In 2004, Obama infamously told a Chicago Sun-Times reporter that his definition of sin was “Being out of alignment with my values.” In 2012, the man who holds the position that in less enlightened times was referred to as “the leader of the free world” showered praise on “those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf.”
And the hits just keep on coming. This past week, Barry told NBC’s Brian Williams, long a gushing fan of Obama, that when it comes to the Bergdahl meltdown:
I make no apologies for it. It was a unanimous decision among my principals in my government, and a view that was shared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This is something I would do again and will continue to do whenever I have an opportunity.
Hot Air’s Jazz Shaw writes in response:
Just for the record, it’s hard to be sure whether the President was saying “principals” as I transcribed above (as in, the key players in his administration) or if he was attempting to say “principles” in a more vague fashion. But given the context, the former seems far more likely. In either event, what was even more striking was the use of my government which caught my eye. It seems to reinforce the idea that – laws be damned – this is his show and he’ll run it as he sees fit.
“Having won two elections, I guess it’s Obama’s world now. We’re just living in it,” Jazz quips — but actually, between the disastrous Obamacare rollout, the IRS scandal, the V.A. scandal, and Vladimir Putin simultaneously blowing raspberries at Obama and devouring Crimean real estate, the past several weeks have demonstrated that this is what happens when world events overtake a man wholly unsuited to be president. Or as Podhoretz concludes his article, “You can only spin for so long before you start spinning yourself. Spin and spin and spin and soon you have a whirlwind to reap.”
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