Is it self-confidence or is it arrogance?
Peggy Noonan writes in today’s WSJ:
Two weeks ago a journalist, a moderate liberal, spoke to me of what he called Mr. Obama’s arrogance. I said I didn’t think it was arrogance but high self-regard. He said there’s no difference. I said no, arrogance has an air about it of pushing people around, insisting on your way. Mr. Obama doesn’t seem like that. He took down a machine without raising his voice. Extremely high self-regard, though, can itself be a problem.
“What’s wrong with that?” my friend said. “You want a self-confident president.”
Yes, we all want a self-confident President rather than an arrogant one. But both Noonan and her liberal buddy are confusing the two, although in different ways.
Self-confidence is an internal state that guides behavior. A self-confident person believes that he/she is capable of weighing situations, making good choices, and taking productive actions. Self-confidence can be conveyed by a calm demeanor, an air of knowledge and authority, the ability to make decisions and stick with them but to remain flexible if facts and situations change (not merely for political expediency).
Arrogance is not an internal state. It’s an external manifestation of an internal state that may or may not include authentic self-confidence. While it’s possible to be truly self-confident and yet not have enough sensitivity to the perceptions of others to curb overt and sometimes offputting expressions of arrogance, it’s also very common for the deeply insecure to convey an impression of arrogance to cover up that deficit (even from themselves, or maybe especially from themselves).
In addition, self-confidence can be objectively justified by a person’s behavior and skills, or it can be misplaced. The self-esteem movement that’s taken hold lately in the school system sometimes has the flaw of fostering self-esteem in the absence of any special characteristics in a person that would make it objectively realistic.
Certainly Obama is supremely self-confident; no doubt about that. But does his capacity for leadership match his high assessment of his own abilities? He is fortunate in that his demeanor, his voice, and his smooth speaking style have engendered the confidence of others for much of his life, and therefore they feed his own faith in himself. But his actual record of accomplishment—as has been pointed out time and again—is remarkably thin.
Only time will tell whether Obama can actually do the job well in the event of his election to the Presidency. But that’s true of all presidents. At the moment it’s only possible to say that there is good reason to doubt that his self-confidence is justified.
There is a difference between self-confidence and arrogance, and Noonan expresses awareness of that—unlike her liberal friend. She errs, however, in denying that Obama exhibits the latter trait. Her definition of arrogance—it has “an air about it of pushing people around, insisting on your way”—is true as far as it goes, but it’s not inclusive enough. Some arrogant people have those qualities and some have a different type of arrogance. Obama, however, exhibits both.
Noonan may be forgiven for not being altogether familiar with Obama’s treatment of local Chicago politician Alice Palmer back in the mid-nineties when he got his start in politics. Who is Alice Palmer, you may ask? Take a look. Obama was the very definition of the pushy sort of arrogance in knocking the woman who gave him his start in politics off the ballot in a technicality during his very first primary race—as well as every other contender running against him, clearing the field of all contenders (in the Chicago district in which he was running, the primary is the entire game because Republicans haven’t a chance of winning). He never looked back.
But Obama’s arrogance now is of a predominantly different type, not so much interpersonally aggressive (although there is still some of that) as symbolic and rhetorical and tone deaf. The redesign of the seal. The “rise of the oceans…” speech. The premature triumphant World Tour. The dismissing of valid questions as being unworthy of his time and trouble. The inability to admit to having been wrong.
Some of this may sound familiar. And in fact it is the latter quality—inability to admit having been wrong—that opponents of George Bush often cite as one of his major flaws.
Arrogance has most definitely been one of Bush’s drawbacks—never more so, I believe, than in his showboaty landing on the USS Lincoln. That panoply of macho swagger was fun for a moment, but in the end it did him no good at all. Nor did his famous “bring them on!” statement, which to his credit, Bush ended up publicly regretting.
Presidents often skirt the fine line between self-confidence and arrogance. But it’s always a bad idea to cross it, although a transgression can be forgiven now and then if it doesn’t become a habit and things are otherwise going well.
A good example of a President who knew what he was doing in this regard would be Ronald Reagan, who had a finely-honed ability to project a calibrated self-confidence. When he was President I was hardly a fan, and in fact didn’t like him (I’ve since changed my point of view, but that’s another story). I might have found him unctuous, corny, avuncular, and even at times foolhardy, but “arrogant” would not have been a word that came to my mind. And although Bill Clinton might have been slick, shifting, and poll-driven, “arrogant” was also a word I can’t imagine even his enemies using to describe him.
But Obama is most definitely arrogant, and if he ends up losing this election I think it may have been his arrogance more than anything else that did him in.
Hummm, Peggy seems either a bit off her game or just a tad infatuated herself.
Bill Clinton was extremely arrogant and self satisfied.I’m really suprised you didn’t see that trait in him, neo.It oozed out of his every pore.
I also disagree about Bush and his arrogance.He’s a modest man who acts very humbly around others, but he is very self confident, and if he wasn’t, the nation who be a shambles.He’s had to absorb more shit than even Reagan and hold it all together while half the electorate have daily tantrums and the elites lose their nerve.The POTUS cannot be a person racked with daily doubts or listening to the voices of his enemies trying to breakdown his will and strength.
Peggy’s been off her game since 2003.She’s done a good job attempting to be deep and insightful for many a year, but she can’t put in what God’s left out.
soupcon: although I was a Democrat at the time of Clinton’s Presidency, I wasn’t ever a big Clinton fan. But despite that, I never saw him—still don’t see him—as arrogant. Maybe it’s partly semantics, but although he was somewhat cocky (to coin a phrase) he didn’t project that sense of his own superiority and self-importance and above-the-common-person-ness that I associate with arrogance.
Maybe it’s just me but I disagree with your take on the carrier landing event.
Bush was a fighter pilot. Granted, it was a long time ago and in the guard but still, he was a fighter pilot. You don’t stay alive very long flying a fighter, even in peacetime, without being very good, completely aware of your abilities and, especially, the lack thereof.
Pilots in general, military pilots in particular, and fighter pilots in the extreme, take self confidence to a place that has to be seen to believed. When I worked with them I thought of them as nearly insufferable. Still, they very good at what they did.
As to the carrier landing. When this happened, I figured that GWB saw this as an opportunity for a former zoomie to do a carrier landing. A carrier landing is one of the coolest things you can do in an airplane and I doubt that there are any former Air Force pilots, or any pilots for that matter, that would pass up such an opportunity. I know, I’d do it in a second if they’d let me and I’m not even a pilot.
I think that you can fault him for being impolitic for the doing the landing while he was president and I might agree. However, when I saw the picture of him walking away from the plane after the landing, the look on his face was “That was the coolest thing I’ve done in a long time.” Military pilots don’t stop being pilots just because they don’t fly anymore.
Body language plays a large role in projecting arrogance, don’t you think? At first, I thought you were incorrect, neo, when you said Bill Clinton wasn’t arrogant. And then I remembered the look on his face when he uttered that infamous “it all depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is” (or his words to that effect). As I recall, he had a truly sheepish look in his eyes that telegraphed what I’d call shame or, at least, an acknowledgement that he knew he was trying to pull a fast one and was a bit embarrassed. Obama’s body language, on the other hand, projects arrogance. Remember when he said in one of the primary campaign’s debates that Hillary was “nice enough”? His head was thrown back, and he looked down disdainfully. Now, that looked arrogant.
DWB. Good point on the carrier landing. I’ve never thought of Bush as arrogant. Stubborn yes. He stuck with a failing Iraq strategy for a long time. But this is hindsight on my part. I know that at that time I was sticking up for our then approach in Iraq. And he finally did change course and did so against opposition from his own party (weak-kneed Warner comes to mind.) Bush as much as Petraeus is responsible for our current success in Iraq.
Neo, I could not agree more. Self confidence is a requirement of leadership and the ability to hold a course when others disagree and you think you are right is important.
Having said that, I spent four years in the Army and I saw a lot of good leaders and a lot of empty suits and a bunch of guys who fell in-between. Moving on up to a national level we need a person who has a strong sense of being right when a decision is made. Of course the ability to make the right decision is more important and the two go hand in hand.
Bush did screw up when he made the carrier landing, he should have landed in his helicopter in his suit and tie and made a presidential speech about our progress in the war. Due to the misplaced crap about his military history he was just setting himself up for a fall in the media.
At the same time I never blamed Clinton for working the system when our war in Viet Nam was going South, I disliked Bill on his own merits as president, there was plenty enough wrong with his actions in his two terms without bringing up the past.
As for Obama, I think he is a refinement of the profile of the ideal candidate where it is all show and no substance. He has enough recent negative history to make him unable to run for dog catcher in a normal fly-over neighborhood. Like some of the worst leaders I saw in the 60’s he is all about the show without the common sense to even understand the mission. Any person who does not have a sense of self-humor and the ability see how silly he can look at times will never be able to lead effectively, he always has to change the world to match his preconceptions and that is very dangerous.
That is all I have to say about that.
There is something phony about Obama’s concern; it is remote and theoretical, as if he were using people to enhance his own high opinion of himself, as if he were trying to model a world worthy of him. He would rather tell people why they attend church than let them speak for themselves. I come away from his speeches feeling as though he is trying to rob me of my own experiences. This was especially true when he tied criticism of his inexperience with noticing that he is black.
I keep coming back to the line from Judy Collins’ song Albatross: “He asks you why and tells you why any way you answer.”
If Obama is “all hat no cattle,” Bush’s landing on the aircraft was an example of “too big a hat for his cattle.”
Hello Neo,
I think Peggy Noonan is actually supporting Obama this election. Since the start of the primary season, she has written numerous articles favoring Obama and many articles critical of McCain.
She has been inclined to forgive much of Obama’s transgressions and all the shadows surrounding Obama’s candidacy from the Rev. Wright, Ayers to Obama sending “advisors” to Hamas, Canada, et al.
These are the kinds of things that we, as American voters, cannot brush off if we have any sense of history and sanity in the preservation of our liberties.
The fact that Peggy Noonan brushes these concerns away with a casual ease– passing off these concerns as, well, distractions, distortions, or an overemphasis of the wrong kind of things– makes her less credible in my eyes.
It is one thing to present what is about Obama to readers and supporting him for President anyway because he supports your personal politics and it is quite another to dismiss the disturbing facts about him and rationalize it away as though they weren’t true.
Miss Noonan seems very optimistic about Obama; indeed, even excited at the prospect of an Obama Presidency. I happen not to share Miss Noonan’s view.
While she looks at the hope and audacity of Obama, I see the shadows surrounding him as he stands out in the midday sun. Noonan compares Obama to Churchill, and despite myself, instead of comparing Obama to Churchill, I compare him with Alger Hiss.
I don’t mind voting for a Democrat. I actually agree with some of their concerns. But I’d rather not vote for THIS Democrat for President.
Obama is clearly never, never wrong. Is that always a part of arrogance, or is that something else? How about the consistent taking credit for the work of others? He is an interesting character, and hard to understand. How about hubris?
Arrogant without a doubt. His flip-flopping implicitly says at least two things: 1) lack of core beliefs and 2) scorn for the rubes. “What does it matter what I say to these rubes? I’ll just say something to please them, throw the dog a bone.” An arrogant person scorns those below him.
BTW, if Bush is so arrogant, then why has he been so restrained in responding to his attackers? By contrast, note Obama’s attacking those who correctly pointed out that his inflated tires and drilling remarks showed an abysmal lack of knowledge about our energy situation
Bush’s carrier landing was all about pride (certainly not arrogance) and the celebration of the success of an important mission, as part of the larger campaign, accomplished valiantly and selflessly by was tantamount to the famous WWII retort to the enemy, “NUTS”; History will vindicate Bush, Cheney and their noble company, on Iraq, including it’s planning and execution, while the peanut gallery left will fade into the oblivion of the innefectual, fools in every sense of the word, yapping endlessly for decades of sucker negotiations, always resulting in greater long-term danger and tragedy for innocents. Beware of B.O.’s promotion of the black hole of Afghanistan as the cause celebre, if he is elected. Iraq may have the potential to evolve into another Turkey (no guarantee), but Afghanistan is not a place where we should pull punches, endanger our soldiers, or hope for more than propping up a non-belligerant strongman like Karzai; Maybe, if future generations are lucky, in a couple hundred more years, Afghanistan will enter the 20th century…
Sorry, I screwed up the typing above, please re-read the beginning:
Bush’s carrier landing was all about pride (certainly not arrogance) and the celebration of the success of an important mission, as part of the larger campaign, accomplished valiantly and selflessly by the crew of that returning ship. “Bring them on!” was tantamount to the famous WWII retort to the enemy, “NUTS”; History will vindicate Bush…
With regards to Bill Clinton, “Sincerity matters. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”
Regarding arrogance: I’m not sure I know what it is anymore. Someone who ‘doesn’t know his place’ can be called arrogant, but isn’t consigning him to a place just as arrogant? If someone speaks out, not for himself but for justice or for the mission that all are supposed to be working towards, is it right to call it arrogant?
Is Saakashvily self-confident or arrogant? See his trembling lips, tortured by nervous tic, his maniacal eyes and bombastic rhetoric.
All of progressivism is out of control arrogance. Basically these are people standing on the backs of giants, and bitching about the view.
It’s also worth notiing that Obama is thin skinned and unable to tolerate any criticism (real, imagined, constructive or otherwise), joke, pardody or challenge (just think of the tire guage flap).
There is a comment to TimesOnLine article headed “Georgian president banked on Russia has no will to fight”:
Looks like Bill Clinton’s Kosovo chickens have come home to roost.
Minor Collinsworth, Claremont, CA, USA
Maybe he’s just an asshole.
That Bush could land that fighter (the least forgiving of planes) on a carrier (the least forgiving of landing strips) after at least 20 years of not having flown such a plane says a great deal about his memory and physical and mental abilities. It was a grand gesture, not a grandiose one, and it undoubtedly was seen as such by the uniformed services. I loved it. Compare to Carter, the former naval officer, who used oars on a farm pond to beat off a swimming rabbit.
Obama is the predictable product of affirmative action. Yes, he’s probably bright, but his entire life, and Michelle’s also, is due to the many passes given because of color, not meritorious performance. As we sow so shall we also reap.
Neo:
There’s a reason why a pilot seems to swagger when he is walking away from his plane after landing, other than great pride in himself. He’s wearing a G-suit which is not famous for being comfortable.
The g-suit has inflatable bladders that wrap around your thighs and abdomen and are inflated to prevent blood from draining from the head to the lower body to prevent loss of consciousness. All of that gear with its assorted hoses and straps can make a person walk a little differently.
Military pilots dress for combat effectiveness and survival – not comfort.
Actually, the S-3B Viking isn’t a fighter and Bush wasn’t at the controls during the landing. Carrier landings are a whole separate field of expertise, and Bush wouldn’t have learned that in the Texas Air National Guard.
Nevertheless, it was the first time a sitting president was IN a plane that landed on a carrier, so it’s still cool. And it takes a lot of guts just to ride in a jet plane that slams down on a postage stamp in the middle of the ocean.
Bush is cocky, like the fighter pilot that he was.
But Obama is arrogant as all hell.
President Bush was in the right seat, not on the stick for the landing.
At least that’s what the Navy published.
History will recognize an Iraq with an elected government and the death of al Qaeda as an entity.
I don’t think there will be much shelf space for the Pelosi/ Reid/ MOVEON.org/ Code Pink juggernaut. Just guessing.
Neo-neocon: “While it’s possible to be truly self-confident and yet not have enough sensitivity to the perceptions of others to curb overt and sometimes offputting expressions of arrogance. . . .”
No, ma’am. It’s not that we’re “arrogant”; it’s that others are emotionally irresponsible.
An important step on your path to post-leftist enlightenment is learning to divest yourself of this juvenile belief that grown adults are, as a default, at all natively responsible for the feelings of other grown adults.
Because we’re not. One of the fundamental standards of adulthood is taking primary responsibility for one’s own emotional state. We may choose to take on responsibility for the feelings of other adults, but it is not a default obligation upon us.
Thus, arrogance is not an external manifestation of an internal state. Arrogance is what we call self-presentations of confidence that we choose to dislike.
And what Obama displays is not arrogance but conceit. Arrogance is what we call it when people choose to dislike one’s confident self-presentation, but one nevertheless still actually has the competence to support it.
Conceit, OTGH, is what we call it when people choose to dislike one’s confident self-presentation, and one actually lacks the competence to support it, as well — a lack that Obama and his campaign staff have indeed repeatedly demonstrated when events happen to diverge from their narrowly-plotted scripts.
Aksiom: I have no idea where you get the notion I think people are automatically responsible for the reactions of others. Nevertheless, they need to be aware of their effect on others in order to deal with it, particularly if an effect on others is part of the game plan—for example, if they are running for office.
Where have all of you been…this election season? I’ve searched for other liberal Democrats/free thinkers in coffee shops and other dens of conscious political thought, but have found only pretentious, mind controlled Obamites who rage against me when I try to point out the tiniest flaw in their savior.
Is he arrogant? Yes. Just look at his “prayer” that he put on the wall in Jerusalem: “Lord – Protect my family and me. Forgive me my sins, and help me guard against pride and despair…”
Umm…like he didn’t know he was under all kinds of media surveillance and that his little prayer would be picked up and reprinted everywhere? I can only imagine his thought process on that one: “If I write this in a ‘prayer’ and put it on the wall, and look very serious and pensive about it, when it’s reprinted everyone will see that I’m not an arrogant, egotistical, self-righteous, two-faced, lying bastard who would say one day ‘I’ll never expose my daughters to media interviews’ and then turn around and do it because they’re just too damn cute… America will love me even more!”
So yeah, I think he’s arrogant (to say the least). Will he be elected? Probably. 🙁
I got it from your false identification of arrogance as being an external manifestation of an internal state.
For that to be a valid definition, said “notion” must necessarily be true.
(Well, either that, or you’re behaving as though you think you’re entitled to decide for the rest of us what is and is not “arrogant”; I was aiming for the far more positively characterizing interpretation of your remarks, but if you prefer otherwise. . . .)
Please also note that your “nevertheless” is redundant; as I originally said, “We may choose to take on responsibility for the feelings of other adults,” which already covered that point.
Not to mention how our choosing to do so does not actually absolve them of that responsibility in any way to any degree or amount whatsoever.
Finally, anyone who seriously intends to become president of the united states is arguably insane, since if you succeed the odds are only slightly better than one in four that some wackjob will take a run at you (and that’s just officially; they’re probably even worse in the Secret Service reality that we never hear about), and only slightly better than one in ten that they’ll actually succeed as well and gank ya.
By those numbers, IMO anyone who actively pursues the presidency is a reckless lunatic.
Acksiom: I believe you misunderstood my point. But I also believe I may have located part of the source of the misunderstanding, which I will hereby clarify. I wrote:
Arrogance is not an internal state. It’s an external manifestation of an internal state that may or may not include authentic self-confidence…In addition, self-confidence can be objectively justified by a person’s behavior and skills, or it can be misplaced.
So, although I am observing that arrogance is the external manifestation of an internal state, the internal state of which it is a manifestation is not arrogance itself. The internal state is self-confidence—either authentic or false, and either justified or not. The arrogance is the outward quality perceived by others. It exists in the eye of the beholder.
None of this has much to do with taking responsibility. If a person doesn’t care about perceptions by others, that’s fine. If he/she does—which is certainly the case in the context here, politics—it behooves him/her to take notice of the perceptions sparked by his/her behavior.
“The arrogance is the outward quality perceived by others. It exists in the eye of the beholder.”
Which therefore means it’s not an external manifestation. Because the two characterizations are mutually exclusive.
It’s not that I misunderstand your point; I understand it fine. It’s that you’re contradicting yourself, and what that does have to do with responsibility is that as long as you keep identifying arrogance as an external manifestation, even if you later contradict yourself, you’re still tacitly and inherently asserting a default obligation of responsibility for the feelings of other adults as a result. Because the former necessarily requires the latter.
It’s not an external manifestation. It’s a subjective characterization of the external manifestation of an internal state.
Finally, as far as being doubly redundantly reminded yet again about the contextual validity of taking notice of others’ reactions, yes, thank you, we know already; not only did I previously cover that point when I wrote, “We may choose to take on responsibility for the feelings of other adults,” but I later specifically pointed out to you that I had thereby done so when you failed to notice it the first time.
Two points: What drove liberals so crazy about President Bush and his visit to the carrier is that he looked every inch the President and the fighter pilot because he is both. Democrats despair because they virtually never have anyone who not only talks the part, but looks the part. Liberals are stuck with the horrifying image of Michael Dukakis, his head sticking out the hatch of an M1 tank, looking every inch the dweeby policy wonk rather than the firm jawed man of action. You can put a politician in a flight suit, but they look like a politician in a flight suit. Only those who have actually worn the gear, who actually are fighter pilots, can wear it properly, it just fits them like a glove, and even though the layman may not be able to articulate the difference, they intuitively understand it. The naval aviators on that carrier appreciated President Bush because he is one of them: a warrior. He did not aggrandize himself, he did not brag, he merely disembarked from the jet he helped to fly to the carrier in a flight suit. The image made the point, and Democrats hated it. Thus, their frenzied attacks on the President for daring to visit troops on a carrier. And by the way, the Mission Accomplished banner was displayed by the crew, whose current mission was accomplished–they were returning home after a lengthy deployment.
Bill Clinton, not arrogant?! Clinton oozed arrogance from every pore, but was skilled at masking it with feigned concern and empathy. He of the quivering lower lip and feeling our pain, the comforter in chief. His time in office was best summed up by an Onion headline: Clinton to Feel Nation’s Pain, Breasts.
The distinction between self-confidence and arrogance is related to the distinction between ambition and opportunism.
It’s not s surprised that Noonan would back Obama – who is nothing like her hero Reagan – because she is the quintessential boomer who wants her vote to “say something about herself.” What it wants it to say is that she is still the idealistic youth of 1967.
She is wrong, of course.
Meanwhile, this is a very revealing piece about McCain and Obama. After reading it I want to have a beer with McCain. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1131ap_office_politics.html
Obama is conceited. Not arrogant, since he can’t back it up.