President Obama is, unfortunately, shaping up to be yet another liberal leader who suffers from Enlightenment syndrome--the idea that if you just offer enough facts and reason, everyone will come to see things your way and you'll solve problems. It doesn't work this way--and psychologist Drew Westen, in The New York Times yesterday, explains why. Elected at a critical time, Obama didn't tell a compelling story about how he was going to rescue the country, Westen explains. Nor did he realize what he was up against, and how to face it:
The president is fond of referring to “the arc of history,” paraphrasing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous statement that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But with his deep-seated aversion to conflict and his profound failure to understand bully dynamics — in which conciliation is always the wrong course ...
