"When policy making, the search for power, and the pursuit of wealth have no other objects than to excite admiration or envy, men lose the sense of objectivity, always precarious under the best of circumstances. Impressions overshadow achievements. Public men fret about their ability to rise to crisis, to project an image of decisiveness, to give a convincing performance of executive power. Their critics resort to the same standards: when doubts began to be raised about the leadership of the Johnson administration, they focused on the “credibility gap.” Public relations and propaganda have exalted the image and the pseudo-event. People “talk constantly,” Daniel Boorstin has written, “not of things themselves, but of their images.”

Christopher Lasch

The Culture of Narcissism