Withdrawn, disinterested, disengaged, tone-deaf, alone...Boy oh boy, those are classic symptoms.
I have wondered about this before. Last year at that summit in St. Petersburg. That bizarre walk alone. He seems to have fewer friends than any president since...Nixon maybe? Job approval at 41%. No personal connection with other heads of state. He is shunned. He is alienated. Has to fight "Hawaii laziness." No relationships with Congress. Constant gridlock. His body language, his facial expressions, seem to betray an inner sense of resignation, of hopelessness. I was thinking about this tonight, googling "Obama disengaged," "Obama golfing" (I have not googled "Obama depression" yet) and I ran across this quote:
“You know, when you’re down on yourself, and when you are hunkering down and pulling back,
you’re not going to make any better decisions than when you were aggressively, belligerently putting yourself forward. One issue is that we don’t even tell our own story very well these days.”
That, friends and enemies, is from Hillary Clinton. That is as close as I've found to Obama being depressed but that's what that means. He's "down on himself," he's depressed.
Why, specifically? This is amateur psychoanalyzing, just my gut feel: the turning point in Obama's depression was the NSA spying revealed by Edward Snowden. I wrote this at the time, you can look it up, I did not know how Obama's presidency could survive that, the spying on Merkel, on Rousseff, the hypocrisy on China spying. And this: he didn't know. He didn't know he was bugging Merkel's cell phone. That would make you get "down on yourself," no? If he had known he would have been down on himself because he had gotten caught. Since he didn't know he got down on himself for doing it and not knowing. A double whammy.
I wrote here a little while ago that in everything I write I try to put myself in the shoes of the person I write about. I did that with Obama over NSA. I would have been ashamed to show my face. I would have shown my face because I would have had to. I think he was ashamed. But I would have confessed. I would have admitted that I had been spying on my allies and that I didn't know I was spying on my allies. And then I would have ended the spying, not only on Merkel, which Obama did, but on other Germans, which Obama did not, on my other close allies, which Obama did not. And I would have cut NSA back so far it would seem I was cutting them out. He did not do that.
The shame at what I had done would not have left me; my humiliation at my ignorance would have been lasting; I would have become depressed. But I would have done the right thing in the end. He just became depressed.
Opinion of the night.
I have wondered about this before. Last year at that summit in St. Petersburg. That bizarre walk alone. He seems to have fewer friends than any president since...Nixon maybe? Job approval at 41%. No personal connection with other heads of state. He is shunned. He is alienated. Has to fight "Hawaii laziness." No relationships with Congress. Constant gridlock. His body language, his facial expressions, seem to betray an inner sense of resignation, of hopelessness. I was thinking about this tonight, googling "Obama disengaged," "Obama golfing" (I have not googled "Obama depression" yet) and I ran across this quote:
“You know, when you’re down on yourself, and when you are hunkering down and pulling back,
you’re not going to make any better decisions than when you were aggressively, belligerently putting yourself forward. One issue is that we don’t even tell our own story very well these days.”
That, friends and enemies, is from Hillary Clinton. That is as close as I've found to Obama being depressed but that's what that means. He's "down on himself," he's depressed.
Why, specifically? This is amateur psychoanalyzing, just my gut feel: the turning point in Obama's depression was the NSA spying revealed by Edward Snowden. I wrote this at the time, you can look it up, I did not know how Obama's presidency could survive that, the spying on Merkel, on Rousseff, the hypocrisy on China spying. And this: he didn't know. He didn't know he was bugging Merkel's cell phone. That would make you get "down on yourself," no? If he had known he would have been down on himself because he had gotten caught. Since he didn't know he got down on himself for doing it and not knowing. A double whammy.
I wrote here a little while ago that in everything I write I try to put myself in the shoes of the person I write about. I did that with Obama over NSA. I would have been ashamed to show my face. I would have shown my face because I would have had to. I think he was ashamed. But I would have confessed. I would have admitted that I had been spying on my allies and that I didn't know I was spying on my allies. And then I would have ended the spying, not only on Merkel, which Obama did, but on other Germans, which Obama did not, on my other close allies, which Obama did not. And I would have cut NSA back so far it would seem I was cutting them out. He did not do that.
The shame at what I had done would not have left me; my humiliation at my ignorance would have been lasting; I would have become depressed. But I would have done the right thing in the end. He just became depressed.
Opinion of the night.
