The Obama Press Conference: A President On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown?

Yuval Levin on Barack Obama's disastrous press conference yesterday, the one that led erstwhile lover Mark Halprin to call him a "dick":

The President came before reporters without any news to make. He seemed to want to vent a kind of unfocused rage at Congress for something—criticizing congressional leaders at various points for taking too many breaks, for failing to take up patent reforms and free trade legislation, and generally ignoring the fiscal crisis (all of which, we can only assume, were criticisms of Democratic leaders). And when he turned to Republicans, he argued that they were not making serious proposals in the debt-limit talks. They were failing to lead, he said repeatedly.

It all had the feel of a childish tantrum by a person who desperately wishes he were living in a different reality—one in which he is the heroic man of action and his opponents are irresponsible and weak. But the fact is, the president and congressional Democrats have so far utterly failed to offer any path out of our fiscal problems—problems that they have greatly exacerbated....

But overarching all of this there seemed to be a deep rage against the realities of the moment he has found himself in, and the part he has found himself playing in that moment.

Now let's go to the whispers of a White House insider back in November, who claimed even back then that the president was "losing it":

I don’t have a problem saying that the president is losing it...When you take away the crowds, Obama gets noticeably smaller. He shrinks up inside of himself. He just doesn’t seem to have the confidence to do the job of President, and it’s getting worse and worse.
Case in point – just a few days before I left, I saw first hand the President of the United States yelling at a member of his staff. He was yelling like a spoiled child. And then he pouted for several moments after. I wish I was kidding, or exaggerating, but I am not. The President of the United States threw a temper tantrum.
 The jobs reports are always setting him off, and he is getting increasingly conspiratorial over the unemployment numbers. I never heard it myself, but was told that Obama thinks the banking system is out to get him now. That they and the big industries are making him pay for trying to regulate them more. That is the frame of mind the President is in these days....

Sean Hannity, around the same time:

“There are some Democrats that cue me into things. I got to tell you that the feeling among some people in the White House is that this president is unhinged, that he’s detached, that he’s losing it, he’s obsessed with critics, very specifically obsessed with Fox News, he can’t stand Biden, he hates the Clintons, the Clintons hate him. That the only thing he is passionate about seems to be ESPN and playing golf and and playing some basketball, the only thing that gets his interest."

"Narcissus Unhinged", indeed.  Was the bizarre press conference yesterday the first outward sign that our cerebral, cool-as-a-cucumber president is beginning to crack under pressure?  Is he so intellectually inflexible - an ideological brother to a religious zealot - that upon seeing the inefficiency of his long-held socioeconomic theories, he crawls into a corner, beats his fists and shrieks in rage and despair rather than attempt to think his way out of the box?

After long years spent worrying about a madman with his finger on the button, it turns out our nightmares have borne fruit.  Alas, our madman is not a Mullah or a tyrant, but a deranged Democrat, who may well destroy us all rather than admit his pet theories are failures...