The Rawness

I found a great piece by Sam Vaknin, Ph.D and narcissism expert, diagnosing Obama with extreme narcissism. It’s really worth the time it takes to read it in detail, as I think he makes a very plausible case that I think is at least worth consideration, given the impact the man will have over our lives over the next four years.

Admittedly, if one’s sole source of Obama information is the media and their hagiographic portrayal of the man, it may seem to be a very off-base portrayal, but as someone who just finished Obama’s autobiography last week, I do think that you can find support for many of Vaknin’s claims in Obama’s own words. (My review of Obama’s autobiography will be the next installment in the series by the way) If you read between the lines of the recent Inauguration Day coverage however, you can still find evidence of the man’s narcissism amidst the glowing coverage.

Barack Obama, even though he’s actually accomplished very little so far in his political career when compared to most president-elects, has never been one to shy away from grandiose comparisons. He frequently invokes JFK and Lincoln every chance he gets. But lately his Lincoln invocations have hit a fever pitch.

In his first post-election press conference, four days after the election, when asked what he was doing to prepare for his upcoming presidency Obama responded “I have re-read some of Lincoln’s writings, who’s always an extraordinary inspiration.” Since then, Obama has been directly and indirectly invoking Lincoln’s name in numerous news interviews on the road to his inauguration, like on “60 Minutes:”

In Barack Obama’s appearance last month on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” the conversation turned to the president-elect’s long-time love of Lincoln.

“There is a wisdom there,” Obama told interviewer Steve Kroft, “and a humility about his approach to government, even before he was president, that I just find very helpful.”

Even his method of choosing his cabinet is supposedly based on Abraham Lincolns “Team of Rivals” strategy, as the media loves to remind us.

As we inch closer to Inauguration Day, however, it’s getting really out of hand. Obama announced he was planning to get sworn in on the same bible Lincoln got sworn in on:

From the [Obama] transition team:

“Washington, D.C. – On January 20th, President-elect Barack Obama will take the oath of office using the same Bible upon which President Lincoln was sworn in at his first inauguration. The Bible is currently part of the collections of the Library of Congress. Though there is no constitutional requirement for the use of a Bible during the swearing-in, Presidents have traditionally used Bibles for the ceremony, choosing a volume with personal or historical significance. President-elect Obama will be the first President sworn in using the Lincoln Bible since its initial use in 1861.

That’s bad, but not unprecedented. Other Presidents have used bibles previously used by their predecessors for inauguration ceremonies.

But then it kept getting more obnoxious, as Obama announced that he would recreate Abraham Lincoln’s train ride into DC:

Barack Obama has evoked Abraham Lincoln ever since launching his campaign at the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Ill.

Now he plans to arrive in Washington the same way that Lincoln did in 1861, with a train trip that will include stops, speeches and crowds along the way.

On Jan. 17, Obama and his family will start the day with an appearance in Philadelphia, where they will board a chartered Amtrak train. The train will stop in Wilmington, Del., where the Obamas will be joined by Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. Then comes a stop in Baltimore before the group’s arrival that evening in Washington.

“He’s replicating the last leg of Lincoln’s inaugural journey to Washington,” said historian Harold Holzer, author of “Lincoln President Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter 1860-1861.” “This guy’s reverence for Lincoln has no bounds.”

Never mind the fact that many consider Lincoln’s train ride into DC to have been a debacle, as several historians and Lincoln scholars have pointed out:

Obama might want to rethink exactly which parts of Lincoln’s legacy are worth emulating, and which are not…Lincoln’s train journey can be viewed as rather a mixed bag of success and failure. Some Americans of his day thought Lincoln’s off-the-cuff speeches from the back of train weren’t terribly inspiring. Parts of the journey were disorganized, and his final arrival in Washington DC was actually rather a debacle, with some of his detractors accusing the president-elect of cowardice.

But wait, it gets worse. Now Obama is even planning to eat like Lincoln at the inauguration dinner:

The luncheon that will be served in Congress’s Statuary Hall to the president-elect and vice president-elect and their families — as well as congressional leaders, justices of the Supreme Court and pending members of the Obama Cabinet — will be modeled after foods that Lincoln ate and enjoyed.

The first course will even be served on replicas of the china picked out by then-first lady Mary Todd Lincoln at the beginning of her husband’s term in office…

The luncheon’s appetizer will be seafood stew in puff pastry — scallops, shrimp, lobster — served as a nod to the 16th president’s love of stewed and scalloped oysters.

The main course — duck breast with sour-cherry chutney and herb-roasted pheasant served with molasses sweet potatoes and winter vegetables — is a nod to the root vegetables and wild game that Mr. Lincoln favored growing up on the frontier in Kentucky and Indiana.

The apple cinnamon sponge cake dessert is a nod to Mr. Lincoln’s love of apples and apple cake.

A backlash has already begun among historians, as documented in this Politico piece (worth reading in full):

Obama’s frequent invocations of Abraham Lincoln ? a man enshrined in myth and marble with his own temple on the National Mall ? would not at first blush say much about his own instincts for modesty or self-effacement.

And now there are early rumblings of a backlash to Obama’s ostentatious embrace of all things Lincoln, with his not-so-subtle invitations to compare the 44th president to the 16th, the “Savior of the Union.”

Simply put, some scholars think the comparisons have gone a bit over the top hat.

Sean Wilentz, a scholar in American history at Princeton, said many presidents have sought to frame themselves in the historical legacies of illustrious predecessors, but he couldn’t find any examples quite so brazen.

“Sure, they’ve looked back to Washington and even, at times, Jackson. Reagan echoed and at times swiped FDR’s rhetoric,” said Wilentz. “But there’s never been anything like this, and on this scale. Ever.”

Eric Foner, a Columbia historian who has written extensively on the Civil War era, agreed that comparing one’s self to Lincoln sets a rather high bar for success, and could come off like “a certain kind of hubris.”

“It’d be a bit like a basketball player turning up before his first game and saying, ‘I’m kind of modeling myself on Michael Jordan,’” he said. “If you can do it, fine. If you’re LeBron James, that’ll work. But people may make that comparison to your disadvantage.”

As it happens, Obama may find this an entirely apt comparison.

“I’m LeBron, baby,” he told a Chicago Tribune reporter at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. “I can play on this level. I got some game.”

I predict that this is just the beginning, and that the longer Obama is in office, the more the afterglow will wear off and his narcissism will become more apparent. Narcissism is not necessarily a bad thing, though, unless it’s so extreme that it leads to hubris and arrogance, causes one to overreach and impedes progress and teamwork (something many of Bush’s critics claim happened to Bush). To run for high office or shoot for such lofty goals in general requires a high level of self-regard to begin with; I don’t believe anyone runs for President without a little bit of narcissism. (Hell, even to create a blog requires a certain amount of narcissism) I do think, however, that Obama’s narcissism is incredibly transparent and way out of proportion to his actual accomplishments, and the fact that the media and public gives him such a pass on it is truly disturbing.

Recommended Reading:

This is part 2 of an ongoing series dedicated to piecing together a plausible personality profile of Obama. Part 1 can be found here.In the last part, I mentioned how I thought Obama’s main strategy was to sell himself using a compelling narrative rather than focusing on a message with a strong intellectual policy foundation. I’m currently reading his autobiography Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, and it hit me that Obama was portraying himself in the book as a Byronic Hero, which I discussed in part 1 of this series. In the book he also mentions his grandfather owning a copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.

He doesn’t mention reading it himself though, but it made enough of an impact on him as a kid for him to mention it decades later. It made me wonder whether seeing his grandfather own and use that book to help him with his sales career made him open to the idea of reading self-help books to improve communicating and connecting with people too.

I flipped through my copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People to see if I could see an obvious influence of the book on his personal style, but I couldn’t really see it, at least not in the first three chapters of his book or his campaigning style, which is all I really know of him right now. (As this series progresses I hope to eventually read everything about him I can get my hands on)

Right next to my copy of Carnegie’s book however was The 48 Laws of Power, so no a whim I flipped through that next, and the similarities between the book’s advice and Obama’s approach to defining himself and winning the Presidency were staggering.
Here is a brief summary of each of the 48 Laws of Power. I’ll highlight key laws which I think apply to Obama below. Most of the connections between each law and Obama are self-explanatory, but for some of them I added commentary in bold and brackets for clarification.

Law 2
Never put too Much Trust in Friends, Learn how to use Enemies
Be wary of friends-they will betray you more quickly, for they are easily aroused to envy. They also become spoiled and tyrannical. But hire a former enemy and he will be more loyal than a friend, because he has more to prove. In fact, you have more to fear from friends than from enemies. If you have no enemies, find a way to make them.
[PUBLICLY DISAVOWING HIS FRIEND AND MENTOR REV. WRIGHT, OFFERING SEC. OF STATE TO HILLARY, IMMEDIATELY MEETING WITH JOHN MCCAIN]

Law 3
Conceal your Intentions
Keep people off-balance and in the dark by never revealing the purpose behind your actions. If they have no clue what you are up to, they cannot prepare a defense. Guide them far enough down the wrong path, envelope them in enough smoke, and by the time they realize your intentions, it will be too late.

Law 4
Always Say Less than Necessary
When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike. Powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less. The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish.

[RATHER THEN GIVE SPECIFICS AND GOING IN-DEPTH, OBAMA RAN USING VAGUE PHRASES AND SOARING BUT BANAL RHETORIC LIKE "YES WE CAN," "HOPE," "CHANGE," AND "UNITY"]

Law 5
So Much Depends on Reputation ? Guard it with your Life
Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win; once you slip, however, you are vulnerable, and will be attacked on all sides. Make your reputation unassailable. Always be alert to potential attacks and thwart them before they happen. Meanwhile, learn to destroy your enemies by opening holes in their own reputations. Then stand aside and let public opinion hang them.

Law 6
Court Attention at all Cost
Everything is judged by its appearance; what is unseen counts for nothing. Never let yourself get lost in the crowd, then, or buried in oblivion. Stand out. Be conspicuous, at all cost.
Make yourself a magnet of attention by appearing larger, more colorful, more mysterious, than the bland and timid masses.

Law 7
Get others to do the Work for you, but Always Take the Credit
Use the wisdom, knowledge, and legwork of other people to further your own cause. Not only will such assistance save you valuable time and energy, it will give you a godlike aura of efficiency and speed. In the end your helpers will be forgotten and you will be remembered. Never do yourself what others can do for you.

Law 8
Make other people come to you – use Bait if Necessary
When you force the other person to act, you are the one in control. It is always better to make your opponent come to you, abandoning his own plans in the process. Lure him with fabulous gains – then attack. You hold the cards.

Law 11
Learn to Keep People Dependent on You
To maintain your independence you must always be needed and wanted. The more you are relied on, the more freedom you have. Make people depend on you for their happiness and prosperity and you have nothing to fear. Never teach them enough so that they can do without you.
[OBAMA HAS DONE THIS WITH HIS FOLLOWERS BY ENCOURAGING THE MESSIANIC FERVOR HIS FOLLOWERS HAVE FOR HIM. IT'S REACHED THE POINT WHERE PEOPLE SAY THINGS LIKE BELOW]

Law 12

Use Selective Honesty and Generosity to Disarm your Victim
One sincere and honest move will cover over dozens of dishonest ones. Open-hearted gestures of honesty and generosity bring down the guard of even the most suspicious people. Once your selective honesty opens a hole in their armor, you can deceive and manipulate them at will. A timely gift – a Trojan horse – will serve the same purpose.

[OBAMA'S POST-ELECTION OVERTURES TO MCCAIN AND HILLARY CLINTON, TWO PEOPLE WHO COULD CAUSE HIM POLITICAL GRIEF IN THE FUTURE, FALL UNDER THIS LAW AS WELL]

Law 13
When Asking for Help, Appeal to People’s Self-Interest, Never to their Mercy or Gratitude
If you need to turn to an ally for help, do not bother to remind him of your past assistance and good deeds. He will find a way to ignore you. Instead, uncover something in your request, or in your alliance with him, that will benefit him, and emphasize it out of all proportion. He will respond enthusiastically when he sees something to be gained for himself.
[THIS WORKS WITH OBAMA BY MAKING PROMISES BASED ON CLASS WARFARE. HE PAINTS A ROBIN HOOD IMAGE WHERE HE'LL REDISTRIBUTE THE WEALTH OF THE RICH AMONG THE POOR AND MIDDLE CLASSES. THIS LEADS TO DISPLAYS LIKE THE WOMAN IN THE YOUTUBE VIDEO ABOVE PROCLAIMING THAT HER GAS AND MORTGAGE WILL BE PAID IF OBAMA WINS.]

Law 20
Do Not Commit to Anyone
It is the fool who always rushes to take sides. Do not commit to any side or cause but yourself. By maintaining your independence, you become the master of others – playing people against one another, making them pursue you.

Law 24
Play the Perfect Courtier
The perfect courtier thrives in a world where everything revolves around power and political dexterity. He has mastered the art of indirection; he flatters, yields to superiors, and asserts power over others in the mot oblique and graceful manner. Learn and apply the laws of courtiership and there will be no limit to how far you can rise in the court.

Law 25
Re-Create Yourself
Do not accept the roles that society foists on you. Re-create yourself by forging a new identity, one that commands attention and never bores the audience. Be the master of your own image rather than letting others define if for you. Incorporate dramatic devices into your public gestures and actions – your power will be enhanced and your character will seem larger than life.

[FROM WHAT I'VE READ SO FAR IN HIS BIO, OBAMA ALWAYS SEEMS TO BE TRYING TO RECREATE HIS IDENTITY GROWING UP. THE BOOK ITSELF SEEMS TO BE AN ATTEMPT TO RECREATE HIMSELF]

Law 26
Keep Your Hands Clean
You must seem a paragon of civility and efficiency: Your hands are never soiled by mistakes and nasty deeds. Maintain such a spotless appearance by using others as scapegoats and cat’s-paws to disguise your involvement.
[PLENTY OF LEAKS AND CHEAP SHOT ATTACKS DONE BY OBAMA SUPPORTERS AND THE MEDIA, ESPECIALLY AGAINST PALIN, WHICH OBAMA THEN DISTANCES HIMSELF FROM BY PUBLIC DENOUNCING AFTER THEY'VE ALREADY HAD THEIR EFFECT. NOT SAYING HE WAS DEFINITELY BEHIND THESE ATTACKS, BUT HE DID BENEFIT FROM THEM WHILE MAKING SURE TO KEEP HIS HANDS CLEAN PUBLICLY]

Law 27
Play on People?s Need to Believe to Create a Cultlike Following
People have an overwhelming desire to believe in something. Become the focal point of such desire by offering them a cause, a new faith to follow. Keep your words vague but full of promise; emphasize enthusiasm over rationality and clear thinking. Give your new disciples rituals to perform, ask them to make sacrifices on your behalf. In the absence of organized religion and grand causes, your new belief system will bring you untold power.

Law 28
Enter Action with Boldness
If you are unsure of a course of action, do not attempt it. Your doubts and hesitations will infect your execution. Timidity is dangerous: Better to enter with boldness. Any mistakes you commit through audacity are easily corrected with more audacity. Everyone admires the bold; no one honors the timid.

[OBAMA IS VERY GOOD AT THIS. HE ACTED LIKE HE WAS ALREADY PRESIDENT WHEN HE WAS IN THE DEBATES BY CONSTANTLY SAYING "WHEN I'M PRESIDENT..." AFTER HE WON, IN HIS ACCEPTANCE SPEECH HE IMMEDIATELY STARTED TALKING ABOUT HIS SECOND TERM. THAT'S BOLD AND AUDACIOUS.]

Law 30
Make your Accomplishments Seem Effortless
Your actions must seem natural and executed with ease. All the toil and practice that go into them, and also all the clever tricks, must be concealed. When you act, act effortlessly, as if you could do much more. Avoid the temptation of revealing how hard you work – it only raises questions. Teach no one your tricks or they will be used against you.

Law 32
Play to People’s Fantasies
The truth is often avoided because it is ugly and unpleasant. Never appeal to truth and reality unless you are prepared for the anger that comes for disenchantment. Life is so harsh and distressing that people who can manufacture romance or conjure up fantasy are like oases in the desert: Everyone flocks to them. There is great power in tapping into the fantasies of the masses.

Law 33
Discover Each Man’s Thumbscrew
Everyone has a weakness, a gap in the castle wall. That weakness is usually an insecurity, an uncontrollable emotion or need; it can also be a small secret pleasure. Either way, once found, it is a thumbscrew you can turn to your advantage.

[OBAMA IS A MASTER AT TELLING EACH INTEREST GROUP EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT TO HEAR]

Law 34
Be Royal in your Own Fashion: Act like a King to be treated like one
The way you carry yourself will often determine how you are treated; In the long run, appearing vulgar or common will make people disrespect you. For a king respects himself and inspires the same sentiment in others. By acting regally and confident of your powers, you make yourself seem destined to wear a crown.

Law 37
Create Compelling Spectacles
Striking imagery and grand symbolic gestures create the aura of power – everyone responds to them. Stage spectacles for those around you, then full of arresting visuals and radiant symbols that heighten your presence. Dazzled by appearances, no one will notice what you are really doing.

[OBAMA'S STRIKING ICONOGRAPHY IS LIKE NOTHING I'VE SEEN FROM A MODERN CANDIDATE. SLEEK, BOLD, COMPELLING, CLEAN AND COLORFUL, IT'S THE TYPE OF BRANDING YOU'D EXPECT FROM A FRESH NEW HIP PRODUCT DESIGNED BY A TOP AD AGENCY AND GRAPHIC DESIGN FIRM. MANY OF HIS SPEECHES HAVE ALSO BEEN COMPELLING SPECTACLES, LIKE THE ONE HE GAVE IN BERLIN TO 200,00 PEOPLE]

[LOOK AT THIS CROWD OF 200,000 THAT CAME OUT TO SEE OBAMA SPEAK IN BERLIN. HOW'S THAT FOR COMPELLING SPECTACLE?]

Law 38
Think as you like but Behave like others
If you make a show of going against the times, flaunting your unconventional ideas and unorthodox ways, people will think that you only want attention and that you look down upon them. They will find a way to punish you for making them feel inferior. It is far safer to blend in and nurture the common touch. Share your originality only with tolerant friends and those who are sure to appreciate your uniqueness.

Law 43
Work on the Hearts and Minds of Others
Coercion creates a reaction that will eventually work against you. You must seduce others into wanting to move in your direction. A person you have seduced becomes your loyal pawn. And the way to seduce others is to operate on their individual psychologies and weaknesses. Soften up the resistant by working on their emotions, playing on what they hold dear and what they fear. Ignore the hearts and minds of others and they will grow to hate you.

Law 45
Preach the Need for Change, but Never Reform too much at Once
Everyone understands the need for change in the abstract, but on the day-to-day level people are creatures of habit. Too much innovation is traumatic, and will lead to revolt. If you are new to a position of power, or an outsider trying to build a power base, make a show of respecting the old way of doing things. If change is necessary, make it feel like a gentle improvement on the past.

Law 48
Assume Formlessness
By taking a shape, by having a visible plan, you open yourself to attack. Instead of taking a form for your enemy to grasp, keep yourself adaptable and on the move. Accept the fact that nothing is certain and no law is fixed. The best way to protect yourself is to be as fluid and formless as water; never bet on stability or lasting order. Everything changes.

Regardless of whether or not Obama actually read 48 Laws or not, a majority of the book directly applies to the strategies Obama used when running.

Recommended Reading:

[This is the first of an open-ended, ongoing series I plan to have about Barack Obama and what may or may not motivate him. I think he makes a fascinating figure, regardless of whether or not you believe in his politics. I think he is an extremely cunning and Machiavellian figure with methods that, once deconstructed, will be very instructive to anyone interested in human nature. This series will go on for as long as I have insights to make about Obama, but will not be the exclusive focus of this blog.]

I had a lot of debates with my intellectual friends during this election about Barack Obama. Many of them would take apart the logical and economic fallacies of Obama’s proposals, giving examples of why they wouldn’t work and pointing out contradictions and inconsistencies. I kept responding that their intellectual approach was actually an obstacle for them in analyzing the political race because the informed people choose their sides and ideologies early in the game. After all, both candidates laid out their agendas very early in the game, either on their campaign websites, their political careers before the election or in their stump speeches.

Most of these much-sought after “undecideds” or “moderates” are simply not that intellectually engaged in the process, because if they were they’d have made a decision already. The key to these people is not to inundate them with more facts, because that is a waste. There are already more than enough facts out there for them to make a decision on. The key to win these people over is to switch from focusing on content, like facts and policy, and focus on context arguments, like enthusiasm, charisma, emotional connection, pointing out personal and professional associations, and likeability.

Keep in mind I’m not calling these undecideds stupid. Although I think many of them actually were stupid, there were also many intellectuals that were tired of focusing on logic and facts and were looking for someone that would engage them emotionally

This is the beauty of Obama, he perfectly understood the power of context over content. When his informercial came out for example, a friend of mine went into an in-depth refutation of it, declared it a failure for being too pessimistic and showing economic illiteracy through factual inaccuracies. I told him to turn off his intellectual instinct to engage every message on a logical.  He needed to realize that the content was irrelevant. It was pure public relations, and Obama was creating a brand using snazzy graphics, slogans and iconography and creating a narrative using soaring rhetoric, cinematography, drama, characters, the narrative, the music that pulled on the heart strings.  It was pure style over substance, and it needed to be judge it as a feel-good movie trailer or commercial and not a logical argument. And from that perspective, the informercial worked.

Most Presidents have written books before or during their elections, but they have usually been policy books. Obama main book, the one most discussed in the lead-up to the election, was pure narrative, an autobiography describing his struggles with class and race and not much else. No sophisticated policy arguments, no nuanced intellectual viewpoints, just personal narrative. Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance paints him to be the Byronic Hero. This is an archetype well proven to resonate with people, especially single women, in works of fiction:

A Byronic hero exhibits several characteristic traits, and in many ways he can be considered a rebel. The Byronic hero does not possess “heroic virtue” in the usual sense; instead, he has many dark qualities. With regard to his intellectual capacity, self-respect, and hypersensitivity, the Byronic hero is “larger than life,” and “with the loss of his titanic passions, his pride, and his certainty of self-identity, he loses also his status as [a traditional] hero” (Thorslev 187).

He is usually isolated from society as a wanderer or is in exile of some kind. It does not matter whether this social separation is imposed upon him by some external force or is self-imposed. Byron’s Manfred, a character who wandered desolate mountaintops, was physically isolated from society, whereas Childe Harold chose to “exile” himself and wander throughout Europe. Although Harold remained physically present in society and among people, he was not by any means “social.”

Often the Byronic hero is moody by nature or passionate about a particular issue. He also has emotional and intellectual capacities, which are superior to the average man. These heightened abilities force the Byronic hero to be arrogant, confident, abnormally sensitive, and extremely conscious of himself. Sometimes, this is to the point of nihilism resulting in his rebellion against life itself (Thorslev 197). In one form or another, he rejects the values and moral codes of society and because of this he is often unrepentant by society’s standards. Often the Byronic hero is characterized by a guilty memory of some unnamed sexual crime. Due to these characteristics, the Byronic hero is often a figure of repulsion, as well as fascination.

More on the Byronic Hero can be found here:

The Byronic hero is an idealised but flawed character exemplified in the life and writings of Lord Byron, characterised by his ex-lover Lady Caroline Lamb as being “mad, bad and dangerous to know”.^[1] The Byronic hero first appears in Byron’s semi-autobiographical epic narrative poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812-18). The Byronic hero typically exhibits the following characteristics:^[2][3]

• high level of intelligence and perception
• cunning and able to adapt
• sophisticated and educated
• self-critical and introspective
• mysterious, magnetic and charismatic
• struggling with integrity
• power of seduction and sexual attraction
• social and sexual dominance
• emotional conflicts, bipolar tendencies, or moodiness
• a distaste for social institutions and norms
• being an exile, an outcast, or an outlaw
• “dark” attributes not normally associated with a hero
• disrespect of rank and privilege
• a troubled past
• cynicism
• arrogance
• self-destructive behaviour“

The Byronic Hero is immensely powerful with women, and usually just about any fictional work that is immensely popular with women has a Byronic hero as its protaganist, from Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights (Signet Classics) to the vampire Lestat in Ann Rice’s works to the character Edward in the new hit movie Twilight, based on a popular novel Twilight (The Twilight Saga, Book 1). I think the immense popularity of Dark Knight last summer with women was because it portrayed a battle of wills between two (arguably three) Byronic heroes. This Byronic appeal was so strong that it created an intense love of the movie among single women despite the fact the movie is, in my humble opinion, utter crap. Is it any wonder Obama’s biggest voting block was unmarried women?

In Obama’s bio, he mentions early on that his grandfather had a copy of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends & Influence People on his desk. One of the key concepts in the book is to use dramatization and narrative to sell ideas rather than cold, hard logic, which just tends to alienate. I think this is a major part of where his strategy to build narrative over content came from, which is why unlike previous presidents, his book was a book about dramatic personal narrative rather than a book on policy. And within this narrative, he smartly chose to use the Byronic hero as his main character, except with a happier, more optimistic ending. A “safe” Byronic hero with the sharp, dangerous edges filed down if you will.

The other source of Obama’s power I think comes from the book 48 Laws of Power, which I will demonstrate in the next part, which can be found here.

Recommended Reading:

You often hear the terms nerd, geek and dork used interchangeably, as if they mean the same thing. Let me assure you that they don’t. Let’s take a moment to explain the differences.

A nerd is someone with a high aptitude for intellectual endeavors, usually in areas that useful and challenging, but has little to no social skills. They are often good at math, sciences or programming. They often go on to high status jobs and become successful because their skill sets are so unique. They can work for NASA as rocket scientists, do groundbreaking work in academia developing astounding original mathematical proofs or have a career in finance creating really complicated and innovative financial instruments or become high-level engineers. Bill Gates is a nerd. Not only are they scary smart, they’re often always trying to push the envelope conceptually. They’re also capable of producing astoundingly original and technically astounding works of art and music.

Geeks can range in intelligence to average to very bright, but they rarely hit the genius levels of nerds. On the bright side, they are usually nowhere near as socially inept as a nerd either. They are usually good at one or two things, but it’s rarely something useful. Their expertise is more likely to be along the lines of an encyclopedic knowledge of something like film, music, television, comic books, sports or history, but from the consumer’s side. A geek is more like a high level hobbyist than an expert genius. Since his area of expertise can often be of little real world use, it’s not uncommon to find geeks toiling away in obscurity or sometimes even mediocrity. However when the geek is lucky enough to combine his hobby with his career he can end up becoming quite successful, and even attain a level of minor celebrity. His level of knowledge comes more from a monomaniacal dedication to a subject more than high intellectual aptitude, even though geeks can often be fairly bright. Policy wonks, the pickup artist community and bloggers are geeks. Fantasy football addicts are geeks. They will dedicatedly digest every piece of knowledge out there about a topic, but aren’t likely to synthesize it into anything new, innovative and groundbreaking. They mostly tend to memorize and regurgitate, although the best of them are often capable of some very novel insights. Making this primer differentiating between nerds, geeks and dorks is something a geek would do. Analyzing the differences in physiology and brain structure and environment between them and coming up with a plausible hypothesis as to the source of those differences, however? That’s something a nerd would do.

Socially, geeks are much better than nerds. They can make friends, hold conversations, generally fit in, and usually just come off as just quirky or slightly off-beat rather than a total social disaster like a nerd. Some geeks are no visible social deficiencies at all and are actually closet, undercover geeks, but even these social skills they acquired the way they acquire everything else: by monomanical observation, dissection and memorization. They obsess over how to be social the same way they used to obsess over Star Wars, rock and roll or movies, and immerse themselves in it until they learn it inside out. That’s how the pickup artist community works. They take the monomaniacal drive they once had for other interests, that same mania that made them socially awkward to begin with, and now apply it to picking up women, using many of the same trappings as their former geek hobbies: clubs, newsletters, message boards, meetups, books and websites.

Many fields have a mix of nerds and geeks coexisting. In music, the nerd is composing complex masterpieces and the geek is a music critic or blogger. In computers the nerd is programming a new type of software that will have a huge impact on the world or coming up with brand new hacking and cracking techniques that can beat all existing security measures, while the geek is designing video games, works in the computer repair department of Best Buy, is selling PCs on the floor of Comp USA or is a consumer happy to buy cutting edge gadgets and new hardware. The math nerd publishes papers in academic journals, while the math geek is crunching numbers as an insurance actuary or accountant. Many of the very bright geeks in medicine become physicians, while the nerds are locked away in labs doing cutting edge research and publishing findings and winning grants. In writing, Stephen Hawking is a nerd while Malcolm Gladwell and Chuck Klosterman are geeks.

Now you may be reading this far and thinking that I’m disparaging geeks or implying them to be inferior. Not at all. Geeks serve a very valuable function in society. They bridge the intellectual gap between the nerds and the layman in the general populace. They write the pop psychology, pop physics and pop economic books that clarify the complex issues facing our lives for the everyman out there. They’re not as smart as the nerd, but they are smart enough to grasp what it is the nerd does, at least in broad strokes. And since they’re better socially than nerds, they do a better job of communicating it to the public in the form of consumers, investors and journalists.

Now what about the aforementioned dorks? They’re the worst of the worst: all the social awkwardness of geeks and nerds, minus any of the smarts. Napoleon Dynamite, for example, was a dork. But even they have a purpose. Without them who would nerds and geeks be able to make fun of?