Bill Clinton was called “the nation’s first black president” because of his civil rights sympathies. We will first look at Barack Obama, the man who wants to be America’s second black president, through the lens of Bill Clinton because of their powerful psychological similarities.

Childhood emotional trauma can dramatically affect a person later in life, even a president. Consider Bill Clinton, a man with striking similarities to Barack Obama who shares the ex-president’s patriarchal problem. They each grew up without their real fathers. Having profiled Bill Clinton on national television soon after his major personal and presidential failures, I am convinced Clinton has much to teach us about electing presidents. The striking features he shares with Obama invite a comparison for our own best national interests. Note:

External Similarities as Candidates:

Young, tall, smooth, bright, appealing, glib communicator, charismatic effect, Hollywood-like following, seemingly intimate with his audience, highly motivated, Democrat with emphasis on neglect of lower and middle class, espousing strong entitlement programs, promising hope and change, unknown candidates in many ways.

Internal Similarities:

Suffered enormous early trauma, lost father at young age (Clinton before he was born), had difficult step-father who left during childhood, also experienced childhood separation from mother at times, from humble beginnings, lawyer educated at Ivy League school (Yale and Harvard, respectively), involved full time in politics after law school, motivated to seek highest political office, demonstrated addictive tendencies (Obama still smokes, and both used drugs in college), married strong capable woman who was an attorney.

Barack Obama and Bill Clinton share other matching personality features. As president, Clinton experienced enormous personal difficulty with success and his self-sabotaging behavior had a major negative effect on America itself. Given their similar backgrounds, we must study the underlying causes of Clinton’s retreat from success and see if Obama presents any of the same success risks. Both men undeniably display the powerful effects of painful childhoods—and we can always see the child in the man. Remember, New York Times columnist David Brooks longed for a way of spotting negative risky traits of presidential candidates. Now we have that lens focusing on Obama as seen through the template created by Bill Clinton’s near downfall.

With our short national memory so quickly shifting into denial, we forget how badly Clinton disgraced himself. He repeatedly lied to America and his wife about his promiscuous behavior while looking straight into the cameras. He was finally forced to confess in light of overwhelming evidence. Clinton was so self-sabotaging he ended up within a whisker of impeachment. As the saying goes people often end up where they secretly want to or need to. I am convinced beyond a shadow of doubt this was Bill Clinton’s case—his own words told me so.

Unknown to his conscious mind, his deeper intelligence offered a striking self-profile in 1998 on September 11—coincidentally—when he spoke to the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington just after he had admitted his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Clinton wrote the entire speech himself on handwritten notes. As a profiler, I anticipated that in this spontaneous communication he would tell us what really caused him to act out so self-destructively. His Prayer Breakfast talk turned out to be even more poignant and powerful than I had expected. Because my forensic profiling in the JonBenét Ramsey case had made an impression on her a few months prior on an earlier show, Leeza Gibbons asked me to profile Clinton on her television show. So I described the messages from Clinton’s deeper intelligence contained in his impromptu address of September 11, 1998.

In Clinton’s brief speech he inadvertently revealed what drove him to lie and cheat and deceive. First, he repeatedly made references (four) to a “broken spirit” including “if I can maintain… a broken spirit,” “God…make us strong at the broken places” suggesting a deep brokenness which he had been living with for some time (maintaining). To make sure we understood this was deep early childhood pain he made repeated (again four) references to children including, “The children of this country can learn selfishness is wrong,” “all the children in America to be able to say that to their children,” “I want to embody those lessons for the children of this country—for that little boy in Florida.” In case we missed it, Clinton’s prayer was, “Revive our lives as at the beginning.” Clearly he needed to be revived from some pain from the beginning of his life when he was just a little boy.

Then he actually invoked that raw childhood trauma by reading from a prayer and meditation book a Jewish friend had given him called Gates of Repentence edited by Chaim Stern. Quoting from one of the book’s passages, Clinton read,

“Now is the time for turning. The leaves are beginning to turn from green to red to orange. The birds are beginning to turn and are heading once more toward the south. The animals are beginning to turn to storing their food for the winter. For leaves, birds and animals, turning comes instinctively. But for us, turning does not come so easily.” 

Leaves beginning to die, birds flying south and animals storing up their food—winter was coming on.

For Bill Clinton it was perpetual winter inside—he had experienced some painful early loss, some major death experience which drove him to “store up food”—to try and fill his deep aching empty brokenness with one woman after another always making sure he had enough. But it was never enough. In just a few brief powerful images Clinton told his “rock bottom” story: a bitter winter coming on suggests starvation, loss, deprivation, running toward warmth and away from the oncoming cold. His DI, his “blink mind,” tried to tell us and himself that he’d been running his entire life—and why.

It’s not hard to figure out what deep loss caused his pain. It was the death of his father before he was born coupled with the fact that his mother had to leave him with his grandparents for long periods while she attended a faraway school to earn her nursing degree. If you don’t believe me ask Barack Obama, who says “There’s a hole in your heart if you don’t have a male figure in the home…” That is, “if you lose your father.” And both lost them very early.

Bill Clinton provides us with wonderful opportunity to go to school on a president who weighted down with severe emotional baggage which he has managed to disguise to get into the White House. Clinton’s poignant brief story about winter linked to his childhood can be seen as a childhood parable of sorts revealing the deep inner torment that controlled him. This is eerily similar to Obama’s childhood story/parable about the “Beggar Lepers.”  Now we see how the secret, unrelenting brokenness deep in his core specifically shaped his personality traits—the ones he tried so desperately to hide from us.

  1. The neediness: The constant media attention over his misdeeds reflected Clinton’s insatiable need for attention completely draining America’s energy while national concerns were put on the back burner.
  2. The guilt: Don’t overlook the tremendous guilt that Clinton sustained in his self-sabotage, paying dearly for being the center of attention. Remember also that kids feel guilty and “bad” when they are abandoned. Guilt poured out of his speech over and over again: “Everybody who has been hurt knows that the sorrow I feel is genuine,” “I was not contrite enough,” “I have sinned.”
  3. The misguided grandiosity: Attempting to compensate for his pain, he told his Prayer Breakfast audience: “That little boy in Florida who came up to me and said that he wanted to grow up and be president and to be just like me. I want the parents of all the children in America to be able to say that to their children.” Clinton wanted every kid in U.S. to idolize him. We can see his “little boy” pain that he tried to fill with power (being president). Bill Clinton decided at the age of 12 he wanted to be president. He thought power would mend his broken spirit.
  4. The entitlement: Clinton obviously believed he was above it all, entitled to his pleasure whenever and with whomever. It was just another power trip. As he once said, “I did it because I could.”
  5. The anger: Deeply hurt kids are angry kids, and there’s anger aplenty his destructive lies, his attacks on Hillary with infidelities and self-sabotaging attacks on himself. In his speech he noted, “a renunciation of the pride and the anger which cloud judgment, lead people to … blame.” See, it’s all about blame. Who’s Clinton blaming? Try the people who left him—particularly his father.

In the end Bill Clinton inflicted incredible pain on the American people dragging them through his personal chaos, attacking the office of the presidency (symbolic of the father), and, as the “father of the country” himself, abandoned his citizens exactly as he was abandoned. In the end, his famous words to Americans, “I feel your pain” mutated into “Feel my pain.” Such is the danger of unfinished business in a president.

Barack Obama apparently does not indulge in the compulsive promiscuity which Bill Clinton had used to fill his emptiness, but we must understand Clinton’s sexual conquests were more about power than sex. Obama does, however, share that same coping mechanism, that same desperate urge for power, as he attempts to compensate for the identical kind of childhood trauma. Though Clinton’s weaknesses were more apparent, when we look more closely at Obama's weaknesses we see that they are far more insidious and dangerous. This is because Obama’s personal pain as we will see is way worse than Clinton’s ever was.

In the next article we will look closely at Obama for more of the hallmark traits of the wounded empty child (some of which we’ve already seen): insatiable neediness, entitlement, grandiosity, selfishness, deceit, blame and anger. If we think the Democratic candidate can escape his pain, we better think again.

There’s a cardinal rule of history—people don’t learn from history. In a word, that means people have huge success problems. If we truly want America’s success and our own we must learn from history. But do we?

Summary

  • When we consider extreme neediness in a leader we can learn lessons from a recent president and see how he inflicted his deep personal pain on our nation. There are striking similarities between that president—Bill Clinton—and Barack Obama.
  • First, Clinton and Obama share similar external traits: young, tall, smooth, bright, articulate, charismatic, Democrat emphasizing neglect of lower and middle class, promising hope and change, yet unknown candidates in many ways.
  • The emotional issues are even more of a match. Both suffered enormous early trauma, lost father at young age (Clinton before he was born), had difficult step-father who left during childhood, also experienced childhood separation from mother at times, from humble beginnings, became lawyer, married strong capable attorney wife.
  • As president, Clinton experienced enormous personal difficulty with success demonstrating major self-sabotage: lied to his wife and the American people, nearly impeached.
  • Strikingly, Clinton’s deeper intelligence offered a self-profile in a speech he wrote himself to the National Prayer Breakfast right after finally admitting his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
  • In Clinton’s brief speech he inadvertently revealed what drove him to lie and cheat and deceive. He made repeated references to brokenness which he linked repeatedly to childhood, suggesting also how he looked to the power of the presidency and to his affairs to fill his pain.
  • In a poignant brief story of winter: leaves dying, birds desperately flying south, animals storing food he unknowingly revealed the deep “winter” pain of deprivation and abandonment/death that controlled him. (His own version of a childhood parable.) Clearly his childhood pain was linked particularly to the loss of his father.
  • Bill Clinton provides us with wonderful opportunity to go to school on a president who was weighted down with severe emotional baggage which he managed to disguise.
  • In the end Bill Clinton inflicted his buried pain on the American people, attacking the office of the presidency (symbolic of the father), and, as the “father of the country” himself, abandoned his citizens exactly as he was abandoned. His famous words to Americans, “I feel your pain” mutated into “Feel my pain.” Such is the danger of unfinished business in a president.
  • Would we reelect Bill Clinton knowing what he put nation through?
  • Though Clinton’s weaknesses of the flesh were more apparent, when we look more closely at Obama's weaknesses we see that they are far more insidious and dangerous. This is because Obama’s personal pain as we will see is way worse than Clinton’s ever was.
  • Obama cannot escape his pain—his own unfinished businesss—anymore than other human beings. We must examine him more closely for similar signs of woundedness which he could inflict on America and how he might do it—as Bill Clinton did.