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I will venture to say that we know that Obama is not a nice guy.
I say this because:
- He threw is grandmother, who brought him up during his teenage years, "under the bus."
- Rather than protect his wife when pressured to produce her Princeton thesis, he allowed the media to access it. He must have known it would undergo scrutiny. Wasn't it enough that Michelle’s thesis professors put her on the spot, without the whole country (and world) doing the same decades later? Even Hillary declined to have her thesis made public.
- He sat for twenty years in Wright's church, and lied about not hearing the vicious sermons Wright preached. It is bad enough that he lied, but it is just as bad or worse the kind of bitterness and antagonism he must hold towards America, having been privy to those sermons.
- When put on a sudden spot, like in this interview, he loses all his charm and goodwill, and resorts to bad feelings based on false statistics and manufactured grudges.
- This person thinks that he has a hidden misogynistic personality. I tend to agree.
- He is a manipulator, as I posted here. He lets his wife make outrageous statements, as though by proxy for him, never denounces what she says, but lets her get all the flack. And when Malia Obama wears a politically loaded peacenik t-shirt while in Moscow, looking ungainly and unattractive, he (and his wife) let her. Again, I'm deducing that he's letting Malia play out his political views, once again showing his manipulative side.
- Probably the most revelatory is his public persona, which he camouflaged and hid from us for much of his campaign, which he then started to slowly unravel as his presidency progressed. For example, he never mentioned his middle name, but then clearly made it a part of his identity early on in his presidency. This would qualify any other politician (or person) as a liar. So, are liars nice guys?
- Finally, I do think the personal is the political. What a person does in public (and as a public person) reflects on his personality.
On the other had, we may think he is a nice guy because:
- He always talks about how much he loves his daughters.
But:
Many not-so-nice people have strong emotional attachments to people close to them.
- He appears to have a long and successful marriage with Michelle.
But:
As much as I hate getting into people’s marital affairs, we don’t know what goes on in their home. People have written about his stubborn pursuit of his political career, which had Michelle frustrated at being left behind with their children in Chicago while he was away in Washington, causing years of tension in their house.
- He appears charming and affable.
But:
He has shown an inability to hold spontaneous press conferences, getting his Speaker of the House to cover for him. Is he afraid of not appearing charming and friendly when asked difficult questions?
He may smile a lot, but then there are moments when we see his grimacing face, which suggests that all that smiling may just be a front.
- He seems to have good manners (I remember when he pulled Hillary’s chair out for her during one of their debates).
But:
Pulling the chair out for Hillary may have been what his grandma (now under the bus) taught him, and was a knee-jerk reaction.
- He takes Michelle out on dates.
But:
One particular date he had with his wife came at an extraordinary expense, and a choreography of helicopters and airplanes, all for dinner and theatre in New York. If he were a genuinely nice person, surely he would have scrapped this at a time when people were losing their jobs and a recession was looming in the horizon?
On another date, while in the Prague, he ignored or neglected protocol in a foreign land and preferred to pass the time at a restaurant with his wife instead. My theory on that was that Michelle didn't handle the trip that well (remember her fashion disasters?), and needed buttering up.
I don’t mean to be facetious, but someone once told me that Stalin was quite possibly a nice person (according to his private friends), yet look what he did to his country.
I understand people defending Obama’s personal character; it is never good to gossip since there is really so much we don’t know. But, there is a lot we do know, and perhaps we should base our decisions on that instead. That is after all what we are called to do:
Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.I will stick to my long-time analysis that Obama is not as nice as he makes out. Charming, yes, although even that is losing ground with many people.
Actually, there is one theory that he is simply a narcissist. I tend to agree with that, which explains so much of his posturing and charming persona. And narcissists definitely are not nice people.