COMMENTARY | President Barack Obama wants us to prove our love for him. In response to a shout out from someone in a crowd he was haranguing, Obama shouted, “If you love me, you’ve got to help me pass this bill,” according to National Journal.
The crowd was in North Carolina and the bill, obviously, was the jobs bill. Obama may have been in a teasing mood, but it does buttress his image as someone who is very enamored of himself.
It occurs to me that “prove your love” was something hormone-addled teenage boys used to say to their girlfriends when they were being tardy about going all the way. Maybe they still do; I don’t know. It has been a long time since I was a teenager.
In any event, dating how-to books written in the 1950s suggested that this was a sure sign for a virtuous young lady (and 50 or 60 years ago a young lady had better be virtuous) to drop the boyfriend like a live hand grenade. Otherwise what might follow would be something messy and uncomfortable — if one was lucky. If one was unlucky, it was a quick trip to Aunt Edna to have the baby or else a wedding via shotgun.
To have the president of the United States make the same suggestion as a horny teenage boy from the “Happy Days” era is kind of creepy. I have not actually “loved” anyone in public office. Admired and respected, yes. But there is no one, not even Ronald Reagan himself, who could get me to support a manifestly unwise piece of legislation out of love for the Great Leader. Indeed, like the girl reading the 1950s dating book, that would be a sign for me to run far away.
While one should try to resist the temptation to commit psychoanalysis on the president of the United States, one has to suspect Obama’s spontaneous entreaty comes from the abandonment issues he suffered as a child. Naturally he wants proof of other people’s love. Both of his parents indicated by their actions that they found young Obama a bit of an inconvenience. That would warp anyone’s psyche. Unfortunately, that warped psyche belongs to the most powerful man in the world, at least until January 2013.
Source: ‘If You Love Me … Help Me Pass This Bill,’ Obama Tells North Carolina Crowd, Theresa Poulson, National Journal, Sept. 14, 2011