Sociopaths and Politicians (but I repeat myself)
Jim Babka on Jul 24th 2008
In a recent post to this blog, Jason Kuznicki made the point that we should oppose national service plans…
even if nice people like… Barack Obama are the ones holding the whips. Barack Obama? Yes indeed. He touts a “universal voluntary public service.” Right on his website. But if it’s voluntary, it won’t be universal, and if it’s universal, it won’t be voluntary. The plan is self-contradictory right down to the details…
I usually pass up opportunities to criticize Obama because most people assume that means I’m supporting someone else in the race, like McCain. But I’m not.
Obama is, despite the swooning, just a politician — nothing more.
A couple of months ago I heard him close a nationally-televised speech saying something along the lines of, “We live in the greatest country on Earth, and if you join with me, we’ll work together to fix it.” Huh?
Now, I have a theory about this odd, seemingly contradictory behavior. A good politician knows that people hear what they want to hear. So with that interesting close Obama appealed to the Über-patriots, who think everything American is grand, as well as to their polar opposites, the Human Eeyores who are convinced all is wrong in America. And both sigh like schoolgirls and say, “Obama understands me.”
The very best politicians these days (Obama is the current cream of the crop, but there once was a man named Clinton) are, in my humble opinion, sociopaths. That is, they can say contradictory things (a.k.a., lie) and care less that they did so.
To illustrate, place yourself at one of those rubber-chicken dinners where you get to meet the candidate. You’re eager to tell the candidate about your support for issue X. When you finally meet him, he gives you constant eye-contact. He nods a lot. He bites his lower lip. And when you’re done he says, “I feel your pain.”
But I sit on the other side of the room, equally eager to meet the candidate. And when he comes to me, I tell him how much I am opposed to issue X. I get eye contact, nodding, and a smile on his face. He then declares to me, “I look forward to working with you.”
(BTW, It’s funnier when I do the lines with my Clinton voice impression.)
Clearly I won the politician over, or so I thought. Overwhelmed by his charisma, you too think he’s on your side. Well it can’t be both. So which of us did? Maybe neither of us did!
But he either won us over or at least neutralized our opposition to him, for now. His success is what mattered most in his value system. He spoke out of both sides of his mouth.
There will be no pangs of conscience, on the politicians part, for such behavior. And that lack of recognition and inner turmoil for lying — virtually every single day of their political lives — is why we fear sociopaths. We’d do well to fear politicians too. Trusting them has gotten us into a lot of trouble.
Filed in The Bureau
Re Obama’s quote and your problem with: “We live in the greatest country on Earth, and if you join with me, we’ll work together to fix it”
Hang out with world class manufacturers and you’ll find the exact same rhetoric. Manufacturers who rank at the top of their sector both celebrate their being best of class while simultaneously looking at current product and process defects as opportunities to further distance themselves from their competition. Being delegated the task of fixing a problem is a career opportunity where progress is made transparent up and down the food chain.
As an ex-manufacturer who worked for two such companies, I embrace Obama’s message of optimal process over platform planks, in fact I find it startlingly rare to experience this sort of rhetoric in a politician and believe it provides us with evidence of superior thinking and intellect.
Having voted for Bush 43 in 2000 knowing he was not a smart guy but waving that off because I agreed with more of his positions than Gore’s, I’ve since learned to weight intelligence and love of process relative to policy positions more than I did in 2000 and have been happier with my votes in retrospect even though I now vote across party lines.
“Human Eeyores.” Ha!
As for Obama’s universal national service, liberty also means leaving me the hell alone, to do good as I see fit, according to my own understanding of “good,” not his.
Mr. Heath, I assure you that President Obama’s “process” will ensure that everyone’s working on his understanding of the good, which will tend toward centralization toward government. When Michelle says Barack “won’t leave us alone,” I take her at her word. [In fact, he won't even leave the Germans alone, as we saw today.]
The best thing about Dubya’s faith-based action plan—in theory—was that we could see something already up and running, adjudge it good or not-so-good, and expand their means to do good. Those involved were volunteers, exercising their liberty to do good as they saw fit. President Obama, on the other hand, wants to hand out government stipends and create his own do-good machine.
I’d rather he didn’t, for a number of reasons.
“We live in the greatest country on Earth, and if you join with me, we’ll work together to fix it”
My understanding from the rhetoric is that the USA is supposed to be the best country ever, anywhere, anywhen. This should be used to champion patriotism and national identity. Given that for a while there, the USA viewed itself (and possibly by several other nations including some of the EU) as the most progressive nation on earth and a world economic and military leader.
On the other hand, it is a view of a good portion of the nation that this country is f***ing itself hard. It’s in serious trouble, we’ve had more senators/legislators being deposed or taken down through overt illicit actions in the last few years than the last decade. The moralism of the nation is in serious disrepair, and the right has risen in a vocal majority (if you shout, they will hear) in response to their potential downfall. This country needs to be fixed, and our economy is massively declining in respect to European and Asian currency, we’re outsourcing instead of insourcing, and politicians are becoming more and more obviously lobby-wh*res.
I had a great deal of respect for Ron Paul and would have voted for him had not that whole Primary thing required him to run as a Republican, and that sleeze-bags like Romney were drowning out any and all morally superior (even smarter) people for the sake of their platforms.
This country as a whole, as given the addage about mobs, is no more intelligent than it’s least intelligent member. The same is true for any of its consituent, non-individual, parts.
Mr. Van Dyke,
Re your comment, “he (Obama) won’t even leave the Germans alone, as we saw today.”
200,000 Germans showed up voluntarily, I don’t recall seeing this as a mandatory attendance event so I really don’t get your point. I doubt there are too many other politicians who could draw such a crowd so I’d argue this event was the complete opposite of your claim.
While I agree with your point that many of Obama’s platform planks favor more federal gov’t intervention, some in areas that I would object to given that I am a pro-business Republican, one can just as easily find objectionable policy proposals from Mr. McCain. My point was that we should consider that having poorly executed policies we favor may be worse in some cases than well-executed policies we oppose, assuming moderation of most policies by a Senate that is not fillibuster-proof.
Consider the Reagan, Clinton, and Bush 43 tenures. While I was a proud Reagan-youth from that era and applaud the excellence of his Administration’s execution of their oblibgations, I certainly realized that his most conservative proposals were either tempored by the man himself or Congress as I predict Obama’s would be as well. I also have to concede that while I found most of Clinton’s policy proposals mediocre (except NAFTA, his intervention in the global finance markets, and a few other items); his Administration’s execution was near flawless which hugely contributed to our nation’s betterment in a manner similiar to Reagan’s. While I never voted for Clinton, I concede he was a near-great to great President depending on how many tiers are used to evaluate Presidents.
With Bush 43 in 2000, I had a man with much closer policy positions to my own than either of these previous presidents, but his lack of intelligence and overall ineptness and therefore pathetic results should force all thinking voters to consider weighting general intelligence and a proven aptitude to execute well more than they did in the past (where I believe good execution is most easily achieved by optimal processes). I’m not claiming it should overwhelm their policy positions, I have yet to decide whom to vote for, just that Bush 43 makes a perfect case that intelligence and execution matter.
Obama remains in play with me given that McCain appears dumber to me than Bush 43 in 2000 and nothing I’ve seen has changed my mind on that. On the other hand we have one of the brightest people to have ever run, where I find Obama’s weakness being an almost complete lack of experience which I believe is why he supports such text-book Mondale-like policy proposals that would not be helpful. If I were to vote for Obama, I would have to be convinced he’d moderate his views to center-left rather than squarely left ones he currently quietly promotes; I see signs over the past several weeks he’s absolutely open to do this (no surprise) though his documented policy positions remain mostly objectionable to me.
Clerical error, should read, “Clinton’s policy positions”, not “proposals”, I’m cognizant that Clinton got on the NAFTA bandwagon vs. creating it.
My point was that we should consider that having poorly executed policies we favor may be worse in some cases than well-executed policies we oppose, assuming moderation of most policies by a Senate that is not fillibuster-proof.
An interesting proposition from top to bottom. And I do share your apparent enthusiasm for Senate filibusters, Mr. Heath, the last refuge for Edmund Burkean conservatism. Gridlock is good.
Which is what worries me about President Obama with a congress led by Mr./Ms Reid & Pelosi. At least FDR had a Supreme Court to check him, which we will not have if Justice Scalia keels over before Justice Stevens.
Me, I see John McCain as a one-term president, and I think the American people might see the wisdom of putting off a drastic shift to the left for another four years, a shift I believe even an [honest] Obama supporter cannot discount.
Me, I was OK with Bill Clinton, although I didn’t vote for him either. I wasn’t sad or alarmed either time he won the presidency. He was a centrist, you see. I have no evidence that Barack Obama is, except his latest mucky rhetoric, which you’ll understand I can place no belief in.
Rahm Emanuel published a whole book a few years back that, among other things, extolled the “virtues” of involuntary national service for every citizen over 18. I had a hissy fit over it at the time, at a site now lost to a server crash (where D. A. Ridgely and I both then posted).
I plan to vote for Obama, but if he tries to push anything like involuntary national service (aka, AmeriCorps on steriods), I hit the streets.