Maureen Dowd, "Thunder Road": Or "Working on the Highway"?

Do you like New Jersey-born Bruce Springsteen? I do. Notwithstanding my aversion to crowds, I even went to see him in Amsterdam a few years ago, and over the course of a three-hour, sweat drenched, nonstop performance, he gave me my money's worth. I wish the same could be said for politicians.

As I already noted in several earlier blog entries, Chris Christie (also a Springsteen fan who dances at his concerts) is Republican roadkill, given Americans' love of the open highway. He will never walk through the door of the Oval Office, and he is too obese to climb up a ladder and squeeze through one of its windows in the dead of night. Regardless of what he knew about his underlings' "Working on the Highway" in Fort Lee, Christie should take responsibility and resign.

But he won't.

In her latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Thunder Road" (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/12/opinion/sunday/dowd-thunder-road.html?ref=maureendowd&_r=0), Maureen Dowd aptly concludes with regard to America's latest scandal:

"A cascade of subsequent outraged denials about transgressive behavior delivered with bravado and finger wagging, from Gary Hart to Bill Clinton to John Edwards to Anthony Weiner, has persuaded me that politicians — who are narcissists and, in essence, actors stuck in the same role — can persuasively tell the big lie if they believe their futures are on the line.

The Christie saga is still unraveling. Maybe he was a dupe in the dark. Maybe the man in the fleece jacket is fleecing us. Let’s just say, I’m not yet permitting him in my circle of trust."

A "dupe in the dark" or "Dancing in the Dark"? Regardless, Dowd is correct: It's all about narcissism, the plague of the 21st Century. In fact, it has become so prevalent that there are those who would no longer list it as a personality disorder (see: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/health/views/30mind.html).

But whereas Dowd points her finger at Gary Hart, Bill Clinton, John Edwards and Anthony Weiner, where is the reference to Narcissist-in Chief, Barack Obama? By now, perhaps you've forgotten how Obama proclaimed to anyone prepared to listen (http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2011/12/obama-ill-put-my-record-up-against-any-president/1):

"I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president -- with the possible exceptions of Johnson, FDR, and Lincoln -- just in terms of what we've gotten done in modern history."

Well, Obamacare has proven a disaster, and even Washington Post Obama cheerleader David Ignatius yesterday wondered whether the president's "broken" foreign policy could be "put back together" (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2014/01/david-ignatius-only-obama-can-fix-his.html).

Dowd would have us know that Christie threw his chief of staff "off the bridge;" however, Obama paved the way for Christie by throwing both his grandmother and his pastor "under the bus."

Christie would have us believe that he didn't know about this orchestrated gridlock. Obama similarly didn't know about the IRS scandal, which, like the rest of us, he read about in a newspaper.

America was once in search of a messiah, and Obama got away with it. Christie won't. The fat woman - not Springsteen - is singing.

[For more on narcissism, see: http://www.voicelessness.com/ (absolutely no relationship whatsoever between that smiling psychologist with the same last name whom I vaguely resemble and me)]