Last night he gave a speech at the DNC convention that was supposed to encourage wavering Democrats to vote for Hillary Clinton. In reality it was about Obama.
Addressing the Democratic National Convention on its penultimate night to lay out the case for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, President Obama began by recalling his political debut at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He then described how his family has become so well known to America in the intervening years. He spoke of his time in office, how the presidency has physically aged him, but how his daughters euphemistically note he now looks more “mature.”
He spoke of everything he is proud to have achieved — passing ObamaCare, expanding clean energy production, reducing consumption of foreign oil, passing the Iran deal, bringing troops home, killing bin Laden.
He spoke of how inspired he’s become meeting Americans of all stripes. He spoke of his optimism. He spoke of the values he imparted from his family.
If it’s starting to sound like Obama talked a lot about himself, that’s because he did.
In total, we counted 119 times Obama referred to himself during his speech ostensibly about Hillary Clinton.
Note that in arriving at this calculation, we included mentions of “we” when he was clearly including himself as part of the plural pronoun; the many uses of “we” in referring to America at large were not included. “Me,” “myself,” “our” and his third-person reference to “a half Kenyan grandson” were also included.
(Stephen Kruiser at PJ Media has the video.)
In a speech lasting 44 minutes, he referred to himself 119 times. Once every 22 seconds.
This, sadly, is close to par for the course. On Jan. 5th, 2016, he gave 33 minute speech on gun control and referred to himself 76 times. On October 1, 2015, he addressed the nation for 12 minutes on mass shooting and referred to himself 28 times. On January 27, 2015, he may have set a record. While giving a speech in India that lasted 33 minutes he referred to himself 118 times.
We live in the age of virulent narcissism. Self-aggrandizement seems to be the lodestar of virtually all American politicians on the age. They seek power not for the good they can do with it but for the celebrity it brings. While Donald Trump may very well bring narcissism to new and clinically significant heights, the model is Barack Hussein Obama.
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