Biden is the Narcissist

Joe Biden characteristically hugging a stranger.

While everyone has naively been declaring Donald Trump a narcissist—from what we can see, he is anything but—everyone has been ignoring signs of genuine narcissism in another prominent US politician.

Joe Biden.

Biden is what a real narcissist looks like—full of superficial charm. The opposite of Trump.

Someone made an interesting editorial point about the current #Metoo furor over his habitual unwanted touching: that, unlike so many other cases that have recently come to light, his intent does not seem to be definitely sexual. It seems more as though he cannot conceive anyone would not cherish the opportunity of being very close to Joe Biden.

That suggests a profound self-esteem—narcissism, in its most literal meaning. And, at the same time, it suggests an inability to see others as independent beings with their own free will. Whatever he wants, they should want. “Violating boundaries,” in the pop psychology cliche.

Biden has also been rumoured to often swim nude in the full view of his secret service detail, including female officers. But this too seems less certainly a sexual thrill than a narcissist desiring to attract attention—“Look at me! Look at me!” Combined with a fundamental inability to conceive of his naked body as anything other than wonderful to anyone. An inability to feel shame. This is quite comparable to the Narcissus of the original legend.

Biden is also a congenital liar. In this, note, he is unlike Trump. Trump tells tall tales, not calculated to deceive. Biden lies, and expects to be believed. Most famously, his first presidential campaign, in 1988, hit the rocks when it was found that he had plagiarized parts of a speech from British politician Neil Kinnock. This was not subtle or inadvertent—he even pilfered biographical details, true for Kinnock but not for him. A bit of journalistic digging at the time revealed that plagiarism had been a pattern in his past, including in his academic work.

Biden’s public career is littered with casual lies. This is typical of the narcissist: truth to him has no intrinsic value. The trait was perhaps best analysed and illustrated by Shakespeare’s Polonius character in Hamlet. Factuality does not matter; all that matters is the effect of the claim on the current audience.

Examples abound. Biden habitually claims a hardscrabble working class upbringing. But he was upper class. He went to Syracuse University, after all. That’s an expensive private school. He has boasted of being at the top of his class. Yet, even though Syracuse at the undergrad level is not academically rigorous, his marks turn out to have been mediocre. And so on. On policy issues, he will pretty much say anything.

Syracuse University: some great grad departments, but a place rich kids go when they can't get into Ivy League

Most troubling of Biden’s lies is one about his first wife, who was killed in a traffic accident in 1972. Ever since, in public, he has claimed that she was killed by a drunk driver. But there was an inquest at the time, and the other driver was exonerated of fault. With certainty, had there been alcohol involved, it would have been detected. Here, Biden is casually destroying someone else’s life to get himself a little more attention and a little more sympathy. It is all about Biden, and others have no intrinsic rights. This is classic narcissistic behaviour.

It is alarming that we seem so unable to spot a narcissist right in front of our noses, and yet so easily scapegoat innocents with the false charge.

Vastly more public awareness is needed.

And don’t vote for Biden.