Charles Krauthammer appeared on the radio-box again to say that while he has "foresworn" long-distance psychiatry he still thinks Barack Obama is a "narcissist" who "
talks like the emperor, Napoleon" because he says "I" a lot, and remember that time he announced that American military forces had killed Osama bin Laden and he said "I"
so many times in that speech?
Since Krauthammer can't be bothered to check on mere matters of fact, I found the transcript of President Obama's speech about the death of Osama bin Laden, and checked the pronoun counts and rates. In fact, the speech contains 1396 words, of which 10 are 'I', for a rate of 0.7%. Perhaps Krauthammer was thinking of President Reagan's Address to the Nation on Events in Lebanon and Grenada, which did have "29 references to I" — though the overall word count was higher, so that the rate was exactly the same, at 0.7%.
It's a tribute to our nation's culture that a man like Krauthammer, who so consistently expresses blatant quantitative falsehoods about national leaders, is not only out of jail but comfortably established as a commentator for a major media outlet.
Ah, but Krauthammer was including phrases like "commander-in-chief" and "on my command" as equivalent to "I", because of course they are. It's hard to care very much because in the history of plainly stupid things Charles Krauthammer has said in public this barely ranks, but it's curious just how ingrained (see links) this "I" notion is among "serious" conservative pundits. They're committed to the notion that Obama says "I" more than other presidents (factually, he doesn't appear to) and that it shows that something sinister is afoot in the man's mind. George Will seems to be enamored of the point as well, which is what I mean by "serious" conservative pundits—the ones who make a point of acting very genteel and intellectual and somehow nonetheless manage to espouse ideas that they seem to have gleaned from chain emails your grandfather sends you.
So what does it say about someone's mind when they're continually stretching the truth or lying outright in order to promote themselves and their point of view? I've never once seen Charles Krauthammer genuinely happy in his life, at least not on camera—he always has the look of a man who was chewing on broken glass before the camera cut to him and is still looking for a discreet place to spit it out—what psychological profile can we glean from that? George Will insists on his own continued relevance no matter how uproariously fact-challenged his columns get, apparently believing that checking your work is for the little people, not him—if that isn't narcissism or an emperor complex, what would be?
Both punditry and politics are inherently narcissistic professions. There's no two ways about it, believing what you have to say is more important, or more nuanced, or more insightful than anyone else's ideas and that you should be rewarded for them is a sign that you hold yourself in particularly high regard. It's nearly a required character trait for politicians, who must self-promote constantly, and it is a particularly strong reflex among pundits or "think-tank" denizens who continue to churn out the same policy tracts even after their ideas have been proven very wrong or even objectively catastrophic in the real world. We will be greeted as liberators! Outsourcing military logistics operations will work swimmingly! Privatization of city functions will save money! Tax cuts to the rich will help everyone else! The scientists are wrong about climate change because the bastards are probably all up to something!
The "Obama is a narcissist because let's count how many times he says 'I'" talk seeks to define Obama as someone who holds himself in high-regard, i.e. is too big for his britches, i.e. is uppity in the common parlance. In a town dominated by true narcissists, it is the pots calling the kettle, well, you know. It also is reminiscent of the Beltway attacks on Clinton, in his early presidency, when Clinton and the First Lady were not seen as part of the Washington crowd, and not seen as fitting in with the Washington cocktail society, and those pundits grumbled mightily that the elected president of the United States just was not with the program of how things were to work among the movers and shakers of "their" town.
Charles Krauthammer, you are a narcissist. Accept it. George Will? You are an insufferable narcissist. Get over it, it is the defining characteristic of your profession—for example, the pundit who went to Colorado to eat pot-laced candy and was able to relay to the nation much of cannabis culture through her one hotel-room experience. It is suit and tie required in order to espouse your opinions on television or in syndicated opinion columns at all. Perhaps Barack Obama is a narcissist too and perhaps he isn't, but if he was it would just mean you had more in common with the man than you thought.