By LUCY MCCALMONT – Politico
Conservative columnist — and former psychiatrist — Charles Krauthammer took time Monday for presidential couch analysis, saying President Barack Obama is not manic but, rather, a narcissist who “talks like the emperor, Napoleon.”
“So I decided when I left psychiatry never to use my authority. But let me just say as a layman, without invoking any expertise, Obama is clearly a narcissist in the non-scientific use of the word. He is so self-involved, you see it from his rise,” Krauthammer said Monday on “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” according to a transcript.
Pointing to what Krauthammer called the “theater” of Obama’s 2008 campaign, he continued to slam and assess the president’s personality.
“I think he’s extremely self-involved. He sees himself in very world historical terms, which means A) because he’s an amateur, he doesn’t know very much, and B) because he’s a narcissist, he doesn’t listen,” Krauthammer said.
The conservative emphasized that he doesn’t like to use his authority on psychiatric analyses, “because you really can’t do it at a distance,” but nevertheless offered up a take on Obama.
“My specialty when I was a psychiatrist was bipolar disease. And I wrote some papers on manic disease. He’s not manic, and I don’t think he’s depressed,” Krauthammer said.
He also noted that Obama’s speeches often refer to himself, which Krauthammer suggested Obama has done more than his White House predecessors.
“This is a guy, you look at every one of his speeches, even the way he introduces high officials — I’d like to introduce my secretary of state. He once referred to ‘my intelligence community.’ And in one speech, I no longer remember it, ‘my military.’ For God’s sake, he talks like the emperor, Napoleon,” Krauthammer said.
He continued, “He does have this sense of this all being a drama about him, and everybody else is just sort of part of the stage.”
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