Barack Obama’s words and behavior have strongly suggested that he is still secretly lacking a sense of manhood, a sense of authority. His behavior with two older men—McCain and Biden—suggests that he’s still seeking that father he missed in his early years. That father who wasn’t there to guide and shape young Barack, that absent father whom he yearned for day after day.

It was no accident that on Father’s Day, June 15, 2008, in a speech at the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago, Obama said, “There’s a hole in your heart if you don’t have a male figure in the home that can guide you and lead you and set a good example for you.”  He went on to confront fathers about the importance of being there with their kids. Of course, he couldn’t come right out and admit he was talking about himself, and we might think, “Oh, he just means a male figure in the home.” Surely a surrogate father can help, but if your real father abandons you, nobody in the world can ever truly replace him.

Young Obama could in no way have appreciated his father or felt his strength and guidance after his dad left, returned to Africa, and had another son there by an African woman. By definition, Obama had a bad example as a father which surely left him feeling bad about himself in three typical ways. Not only did his absent father deprive him of self-worth, but Obama would have concluded that his father left him because Barack was himself fundamentally a bad person. When kids are abandoned they invariably feels it’s their own fault—as I have repeatedly learned from the deeper intelligence in therapy. And then, to make matters worse, the children become “bad” because they feel angry over that rejection.

Notice his words again, “a hole in your heart if you don’t have (1) a male figure (read father) that (2) can guide you and (3) lead you and (4) set a good example for you.”

Pay attention to what such a young boy is missing: a sense of male strength, a father to guide you, a father to lead you, and a father to set a good example for you. Haven’t we just seen that played out with Biden—the alpha male Obama so desperately seeks? (Does the presidency call for anything besides an alpha person?) Now consider Obama’s comment about his running mate, “a man ready to step in and be president.”

Now review his first thoughts about the ticket. Obama longs first for “a man (ready to step in).” He’s shouting at us how deeply deficient he himself feels as a man. He could easily have used the word “someone” instead of “a man.” But he’s defining precisely that the hole in him is the missing man, that inside he’s entirely empty.

Observe also, “a man ready to step in and be president” when Obama isn’t there—by now the not-so-subtle message that when it comes to truly being presidential material at this moment in time, he’s not there, he’s not the one. He’s telling us—the American electorate—that we need someone to step in for him. He’s telling us that we need to vote for someone else, namely McCain.

But Obama’s deepest personal request is that he needs a man to step into his life and show him how to be a man, build something into him that fills that hole inside of him. A man whose footsteps he can walk in just as a son walks in his father’s footsteps until eventually his foot becomes as large as his father’s and he can walk on his own.

We also can understand in an even deeper light his related comment, “I want someone to come to me, and say ‘Mr. President you’re wrong about this and why.’” Once more, “I want someone to come to me” reads “I want a man to come and develop me, to step into my life, someone who will show authority and tell me I’m wrong.” He seeks someone who has more authority than he does at the moment because deep inside he knows he’s wrong. The clearer message, “Tell me I’m wrong as president”—translated, “I’m the wrong presidential candidate.” Obama again links two men to the presidency and tells us one man is right while he is wrong.

And even more personally, he reminds us again that when a father leaves a boy, the son concludes something is wrong with him, that he’s a bad kid. Deep down Obama feels fatally flawed. His emphasis on “bad” and “wrong” also suggest a subtle warning to America. Perhaps his behavior did as well: initially not wearing an American flag lapel pin, not putting his hand over his heart during the National Anthem, his long association with an American-hating pastor and with radical extremists including Weather Undergound co-founder Bill Ayers. Because he cannot allow himself to personally feel such expressions of anger, Obama indulges in anger vicariously through people such as Ayers and his former pastor.

Understanding the Context

Understanding the ever-present context of a presidential election, Obama’s deeper intelligence again finds another creative way to tell us that he’s not up to the job. Whenever a person is closely aspiring to great power, such as a possibly being elected president, virtually all of his thoughts, his deeper psycholinguistic messages, are linked to that situation. In a nutshell, Obama is constantly thinking about, “If I became president,” and we can see how his deeper, more truthful thought patterns relate to this issue. And it’s clear that his “blink mind” observations are strikingly different than those in his surface mind.

It’s as if Obama is telling us one short story after another: Think of a man stepping in for me as president. Think of a man more knowledgeable than me as president. Think of that man who has the authority to correct me and tell me I’m wrong. Think of me being wrong as president. Now apply all these ideas to the known context of the fact that

“I’m running for president,” and we hear a very different psycholinguistic message, a message that Obama has continued to deliver in various ways throughout the campaign.

Summary

  • Obama admits to major flaw (hole) within himself in Father’s Day speech, “There’s a hole in your heart if you don’t have a male figure in the home.”
  • Obama reminds us again that when a father leaves a boy, the son concludes something is wrong with him, that he’s a bad kid.
  • Obama reveals how low self-esteem and cry for father would be played out as president, “I want someone to come to me, and say ‘Mr. President you’re wrong about this and why.’”
  • Obama’s deepest personal request is that he needs a man to step into his life and show him how to be a man, build something into him that fills that hole inside of him—which explains why he feels deep down he’s not ready to be president.