Normally, Richard Russell limits his prognostications to the
financial markets. He has done so for more than fifty years.
As editor of the Dow Theory Letters Russell sends out a
newsletter every three weeks and offers a daily commentary on the markets to his subscribers.
For those who do not subscribe the Dow Theory is currently
on a sell signal. Russell is recommending that people be out of stocks and into
cash and gold.
If it did not require a subscription, the daily comments
section would be a blog.
Yesterday, while trying to figure out the Obama psyche,
Russell offered a few comments about the next presidential debate. Four years
ago, as I recall, he liked Obama, though he has never been a partisan.
His comments were concise, to the point, and original. I am
happy to share it with you:
Obama
must feel under extreme pressure to "act like a man and a strong
leader" during debate number two, and my sense is that this is outside
Obama's normal character. Therefore, I expect Obama to step outside his true
character, and perhaps act like a fool in his effort to be something that he
really is not.
My secret suspicion is that Obama was embarrassed and even insulted that he,
the sitting US President, should have to submit to a debate with another man
for the Presidential office. Obama probably thinks the debates are beneath the
dignity of a sitting US President, and therefore, considering his stature and
position, the debates are, in Obama's thinking, insulting and never should have
been allowed to happen. Thus, Obama probably thought Romney should have been
intimidated at the mere thought of debating with the President of the United
States. Obviously, Obama was very wrong about Romney.
Russell was saying, first, that Romney looked more manly
than Obama.
In a world where manliness has been under constant attack, that in itself would have been refreshing. Surely, Romney is a man's man. America seems to have been shocked to discover that real men are not yet extinct.
Russell then explained that Obama cannot act like a man
or a strong leader because that isn’t who he is.
Obama will try to correct this flaw in the second debate,
but, Russell said, to do so he will have to step out of character. And this
might make him look like a fool.
Pretending to be something you are not, especially when
standing next to the real thing, will make you look like a fool.
Next, Russell suggested that Obama performed poorly because
he was suffering from an undiagnosed case of hubris.
Thinking that he should not have to suffer the indignity of
debating, he prepared inadequately and performed poorly.
His performance expressed his contempt for the process.
Finally, Obama imagined that Mitt Romney would have been
intimidated by the notion of debating a sitting president.
I suspect that Obama had gained this impression by having lived his life surrounded and protected by an army of sycophants.
In that sense Obama was right to say that the man he
encountered in Denver was not the man he expected. Mitt Romney
represented something that was foreign to Obama’s experience, and thus, Obama was thrown off his game.
Kudos to Richard Russell for an excellent piece of psychological analysis.
3 comments:
What doesn't break us makes us stronger. Obama's strife was fictional or exaggerated, and the strength he derives from it is of the same character.
I forget where I saw this (perhaps Best of the Web, or NRO), but isn't misjudging the character of an opponent a failing in a leader?
Who the Hell is Mitt to challenge the Lightbringer?
Undiagnosed hubris? Not on the right! Only on the left. Which thinks he is the Lightbringer.
Further, he had no concept of what Romney is except as posited by the MSM. We know he doesn't care for intelligence briefings.
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