It’s not at all surprising to read about George W. Bush living in a bubble such as the one described in Newsweek. Nor is it surprising that he regards disagreement as betrayal or that he insists he would invade Iraq again knowing what he knows now. These are all prime characteristics of narcissistic behavior that borders on pathological.
Narcissists are generally trapped inside their own worldview, one that has taken his or her entire life to develop and which serves as a giant mirror from which they cannot escape. Therefore, their behavior towards others is entirely designed to accommodate the self-absorbed world in which they live. Because narcissists are the central character in the dramas they create, and others serve as extensions of them, they assign roles and identities to each supporting character. Bush follows this rule to the letter, coming up with nicknames for just about everyone with whom he associates regularly, and these handles are not always flattering (“turdblossom”, for example).
Bush’s sense of humor plays a vital role here. While his public wisecracks are generally self-effacing, in private they’re at the expense of others, and usually in front of them. This tactic, along with the routine assignment of nicknames, is designed to keep people in line. Narcissists must be established as the Alpha Dog in any situation, otherwise there’s trouble. They can never be wrong; so don’t expect any clear admission of error. At best you may hear “mistakes were made”, but never “I made a mistake.”
So many in Washington speak about the president under condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from the White House. This fear is the result of the narcissist’s worldview that fails to make a distinction between challenge and attack. Bush perceives criticism as offense, therefore requiring a counterassault, and this attitude has expanded outwards amongst the party faithful in government and the media, who immediately fall in line and equate dissent with treason on a daily basis. This is convenient for Bush. It leaves him free to speak all he wants about the importance of public debate and how it underscores the value of Democracy while all his little turdblossoms execute his real will.
Being a narcissist is neither easy nor fun. The president’s belief that what’s good for his interests is good for everyone’s is accompanied by a conviction that the end justifies the means. This explains why it’s so easy for the White House to change its daily rationale for going to war. But the big frustration for the president is that his mind can’t understand why, with 32,000 dead, tens of thousands more disfigured, untold numbers tortured and the nation approaching bankruptcy, more people aren’t grateful to him for what he’s done in our name.
But the president alone is not the problem. He and those like him succeed because of the growing culture of narcissism among Americans in general. Most of us see the world as a giant high school, and in that high school we are the Bob Populars. We have what everyone else wants, and the only reason anyone could have to hate us is because they’re not us. This reasoning allows us to claim the plight of the persecuted and insist that we were attacked for what we are, regardless of the repeated assertion that it’s not what America is, but what America does. But since everything we do is, in our mind, in the best interest of the world, no one should have a problem with it; in fact, they should thank us, and anyone who doesn’t is simply a disgruntled outcast who hates America, and must be publicly cast as such.
We all have various degrees of narcissism embedded in our psyches, but there are some whose narcissism reaches levels that are toxic, not only to themselves, but to others, and the manifestations range from domestic abuse right up to global war.