Dr. Justin A. Frank Puts ‘Obama on the Couch’; Will Durst’s Random Thoughts on Washington, DC

Dr. Justin Frank returns to talk about his new book, Obama on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President; Will Durst muses on our love/hate relationship with the nation’s capital, and Capitol.

Dr. Frank is a clinical professor of psychiatry at George Washington University, and previously wrote Bush on the Couch.  We begin with a recap of “Barry” Obama’s difficult childhood, then look at his behavior as a candidate and as president through the psychoanalytic lens.  Frank coined the new term “Obsessive Bipartisan Disorder” to describe Obama’s (politically) fatal attraction to appeasing the GOP leaders who are committed to his destruction; we also talk about his chilling detachment that enabled him to crack jokes at the White House Correspondents dinner as Navy Seals were on the way to kill binLaden and order drones to kill American Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen.  Frank contrasts that with his inabilaty to confront political adversaries.  We talk about his chapter entitled “The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Change Itself”, how Obama has turned on his progressive base when it opposes his capitulations and continuation of Bush policies, which Frank relates to lessons from Obama’s stepfather, Lolo.  We discuss the way Obama seduced Democrats and others in the 2008 campaign, creating the screen that we projected our versions on Obama on, and how many of his female supporters asked Frank to “be nice” to Obama in his book.  We revisit Obama’s discomfort with his African-American identity and his uneasy connection to the King legacy.  And to those who dream that Obama would be much different in his second term, Frank offers a–well–very frank opinion.  Your humble host strongly recommends this book.

At 1:11 or so, Will Durst comments on the many views of Washington.

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