President Obama Flaunts His Nero Complex
by EIR Staff
July 18—On April 11, 2009, Lyndon LaRouche stunned the world, by declaring, during an international webcast, that President Barack Obama was suffering from a severe Narcissistic disorder, and that his behavior, during a recent trip to London, which included his shameless fawning over the Queen of England, resembled that of the infamous Emperor Nero (see relevant excerpts).
The reaction at the time, to LaRouche's bold public diagnosis, was sharp. Even among a small, but well-placed group of officials, within the institution of the Presidency, who had drawn much the same conclusion, after the President's bizarre and irrational behavior throughout his first European, indeed, his first overseas tour since taking office, there was a reaction against LaRouche's oh-so-public pronouncement.
But LaRouche, a student of both history and psychology, understood that someone suffering from an acute Narcissistic disorder, has to be confronted—repeatedly, and with brutal candor—if he is to ever break free of the syndrome and return to reality.
So, LaRouche stood his ground, on repeated occasions, confident that his diagnosis was sound, and that his actions were the only clinically effective approach to take, for any patriot, seriously worried about the consequences of Nero-like behavior on the part of the President of the United States, during a moment of the greatest crisis in modern history.
Mirror, Mirror, Off the Wall
Slightly more than 100 days have passed, since LaRouche delivered his clinical diagnosis. In the intervening period, the evidence of the President's disorder has become so transparent that one prominent Washington, D.C. Democrat confided that the joke circulating around Capitol Hill and at Democratic National Committee headquarters is: President Obama awoke one morning, looked in the mirror and saw that his nose was bleeding. Furious at what he saw, he ordered aides to bring him a new mirror!
Rarely has reality interfered with the delusions of grandeur gripping the President and his small circle of Court Jesters, who spend most of their waking hours, keeping the President in the dark, and lashing out at anyone who dares to suggest that this Emperor has no clothes.
Senior Democrats, speaking on condition of anonymity, have told EIR that they are astounded at the behavior of the President and his aides. "They see the world as a zero-sum game," one official commented. "If anyone takes any effective policy action that dims the spotlight on the President, there is hell to pay. Never, in memory, has a President burned so many bridges, with so many former allies in his own party, in such a short period of time."
In apparent imitation of the Emperor Nero, Obama, and his coterie of advisors, led by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel and his top political aide David Axelrod, have conducted a reign of terror against any elected Democrat who dares step out of line—particularly on the President's two signature issues: the cap-and-trade "global warming" Ponzi scheme, to reduce greenhouse gas by creating a speculative market on carbon emission vouchers; and the health-care "reform" package, borrowed from Adolf Hitler's 1939 T-4 euthanasia program, to eliminate the sick, the elderly, and the disabled, through a mandatory extermination program.
Targeted Democrats (and some Republicans as well) have been subjected to three different forms of draconian Executive branch pressure.
First, a group of senior members of the House and Senate have been targeted for FBI investigation, on a scale that would have made the late J. Edgar Hoover envious.
Sources close to the White House have reported that Rahm Emanuel maintains a political hit list, identifying legislators who might stand in the way of the President's breakneck-speed agenda of outright fascist austerity.
When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton recently announced plans to bring in a former top campaign aide and close friend, Sidney Blumenthal, as a personal advisor at Foggy Bottom, Emanuel lashed out, warning that Blumenthal's appointment would be considered a "personal slap in the face" to the President.
Some of the people on Emanuel's Congressional hit list, including some with the highest seniority, and the strongest "FDR Democrat" credentials, are now targets of relentless FBI investigation and a barrage of media leaks. Rep. John Murtha (Pa.), chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee; Rep. Charles Rangel (N.Y.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, perhaps the most powerful body in the House, responsible for all tax legislation; and Rep. John Conyers (Mich.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who has championed a single-payer universal health insurance plan, which was instantly deep-sixed by the President, are but three leading elected officials who have been politically targeted by the FBI—and are considered as potential obstacles to the White House agenda.
A senior U.S. intelligence source independently confirmed that the FBI is "out of control" and going after leading members of Congress. "The Bureau learned some lessons from their 1980s Abscam program," a centralized sting operation against a selected list of Congressmen and Senators, the source elaborated. "Now, there is no code-named centralized program. They are going after a similarly politically motivated list of targets, one at a time. They are exploiting the extraordinary domestic spying powers they got after 9/11. It is very scary."
Soros's Jacobin Offensive
As the President's team moved their cap-and-trade, and health-care schemes through Congress, the White House also unleashed former self-professed Nazi collaborator, mega-speculator George Soros, to bankroll a network of Jacobin organizations, to attack Democrats who threaten to oppose the President. Soros and his Democracy Alliance-funded groups like MoveOn.org, Health Care for America Now, and the Democratic National Committee-sponsored Organizing for America, are waging a vicious TV and newspaper advertising campaign against a growing list of wavering Democratic members of Congress, including such powerful Senators as Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), Mary Landrieu (La.), Arlen Specter (Pa.,) and Ron Wyden (Ore.).
Incredibly, the President has feigned a "Look Ma, no hands" policy, denying that the White House is behind the ad campaigns, the street demonstrations, and the increasingly confrontational phone calls. But two of the most active groups in the Jacobin onslaught, Organizing for America and Health Care for America Now, are actually former Obama campaign organizations, which went through a cosmetic name-change after the elections, but are known to be run out of the White House. And Patrick Gaspard, the Obama White House's equivalent of Bush's Karl Rove, is a former Soros employee and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) executive, who reportedly handles day-to-day coordination with the Soros Jacobins.
Unconstitutional Bullying
In the past few weeks, as the impact of the LaRouche Political Action Committee's exposé of the Obama health-care "reform," as a replay of Hitler's T-4 euthanasia board, has hit home across the country, the President and his aides have launched what may very well be an unconstitutional assault on Congress and on a number of states, which are facing imminent bankruptcy and collapse of services.
High-level Democratic Party officials have reported that Obama, Emanuel, and some members of the Cabinet have threatened governors from both parties with a cut-off of Federal funds, if they don't bring their Congressional delegations around to the President's agenda. For example, Arizona Gov. Janice Brewer (R) received several letters from Obama Cabinet members, and, reportedly, a call from the White House, after Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.) aggressively criticized the Obama health-care plan.
Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe (D), according to Democratic Party sources, took a call from a senior White House aide, who demanded a crackdown on Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), after she sounded off against both the Obama health-care swindle, and cap-and-trade.
Lincoln had also reportedly crossed swords with the White House, by leading an effort to win Senate bipartisan support for a Steelworkers Union complaint before the International Trade Commission (ITC), over alleged Chinese dumping of tires. Obama was reportedly furious that the USWA didn't come to him first, and instead sought Senate backing for their fight. Yet, when the ITC did recommend tariff remedies to the White House in late June, the President let it be known that he would sit on the recommendation until September—holding it as a sword over the head of the Steelworkers and the ten Senators who backed the union complaint at the ITC.
Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-La.) was yet another target of Obama's wrath—and threats of a cut-off of Federal funds, according to Washington sources; and Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland (D), a former leading member of the House of Representatives, was told that he needed to "whip his Congressional delegation into line," or face a shutoff of stimulus money and other vitally needed Federal funding.
One former top Executive branch official said he was stunned at the "borderline illegalities and ridiculous pettiness" of the President and his men.
'Go To Hell!'
The behavior of Emanuel, Axelrod, and a coterie of other White House sycophants is nothing, however, in comparison to the President's own "my way or the highway" arrogance. Just in the past two weeks, Obama chastized African leaders, in an address in Ghana, for "whining" and making excuses, based on former colonial repression. He told the entire California Democratic Caucus in Washington and Sacramento to "Go to Hell," according to one member of Congress, who was stunned that the President chose to work with California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), to impose murderous austerity on the state's most impoverished and desperate citizens, rather than offer relief, in the form of loan guarantees or accelerated Federal stimulus funds.
And, in another unmistakable sign of Nero-esque self-adulation, the President addressed the 100th anniversary celebration of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) on July 16, and held himself up as, effectively, the greatest success story in African-American history.
Just days earlier, Obama cancelled a scheduled town hall meeting in Detroit, choosing, instead, to stage a tightly controlled lecture, in which he bluntly told Detroit's highly skilled industrial workforce that their manufacturing jobs were gone forever, and that they should get a life: Go off to community college, he scolded them, to train for "green" jobs—on the very day that Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed that unemployment in Michigan had passed 15%, with a 22% jobless rate in the Greater Detroit area.
One official with access to Presidential speeches before they are delivered, noted, with growing alarm, that the President is increasingly departing from the text, "going off on ego trips that are getting more and more out of control. It is pure arrogance."
The net effect is one of the most stunning meltdowns in the history of the institution of the Presidency—and Barack Obama is absolutely clueless, so far, about what is going on around him!
The Coming Moment of Truth
Rasmussen Reports, one of the nation's most respected polling organizations, conducts a daily nationwide survey of Presidential approval ratings, among likely voters.
On Jan. 20, 2009, at the start of his term, President Obama enjoyed a "strongly approve" rating from over 45% of those polled. His "strongly disapprove" rating was under 15%. The identical poll, taken on July 18, shows a stunning collapse in public support. Obama's performance received a "strongly approve" rating from just 34% of those polled; while those who "strongly disapprove" of the President soared to 42%. Over 43% of independent voters—who delivered the 2008 election victory to Obama—now "strongly disapprove" of his performance.
Someday soon, the President is going to wake up and face reality—perhaps for the first time in his adult life: His Presidency is in a free-fall; his promises to the American people during the election campaign have all been betrayed; his closest advisors are all clinically insane; and his future looks grim. Will he abandon his malignant self-love and clean up his act? That question can only be answered by the President himself. Far more than the balance of the Obama Presidency hangs on the answer.
