America’s Struggle with Success

Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison called Bill Clinton “the nation’s first black president” because of his civil rights sympathies and his own lower-class Southern roots. Now we 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

Why is it so important to understand Obama’s development? Because early emotional trauma controls a person’s entire life. Sounds like old psychological news, doesn’t it? But the deeper intelligence reveals the effects of profound pain much more vividly than we’ve ever understood. To ignore a candidate’s development is a huge mistake, but it’s easy to make that mistake because victims such as Obama and Clinton both remain firmly in denial. We have to be trained to see through to the person’s pain.

We must keep in mind that a person’s deeper intelligence (DI) reveals his secrets through symbolic stories and issues warnings through these same stories—in essence a type of parable.

In his apology to America at the National Prayer Breakfast we heard Clinton describe his childhood brokenness, his guilt, his efforts to compensate with power and women. He told a brief but vivid story¬—a childhood parable about the onset of winter— to tell us what was behind his brokenness. In that “parable” his DI depicts himself running desperately toward warmth which he found in serial sexual encounters and in the acclaim of political office.

Obama suffers the same woundedness only more severely as he reminded us on Father’s Day 2008 when his DI admitted that his father’s absence left a huge hole in him. Obama related another childhood parable, the compelling story of the “Beggar Lepers.” The setting itself—after a move to Indonesia at age 6 with his mother and stepfather—certainly stirred up the issue of his missing father. Decode this story and we see Obama still aching up to the present day. Beggar lepers show up at his home with holes in their faces, wanting food—broken, damaged people who could do nothing but plead for sustenance. That scenario clearly parallels an abandoned child with a hole in him, a child left starving for attention with nothing else to do but beg for attention. And remember an abandoned child sees himself as bad, as someone cast aside as though he had an awful contagious disease.

In the story his overly sympathetic mother gives in to the beggars’ requests. But his stepfather warns Barack that the lepers will use their affliction as a ploy to become excessively dependent. He instructs Obama, in essence, “Give into them and they will see you as weak.” In short, we have a morality play: dependency, weakness, entitlement, and destruction versus not giving into those traits, maintaining independence and wholeness.

Surely we have to admire Obama for fighting against the wounded part of him, but the battle which his stepfather described still rages on within him. Of course, we don’t like to think of our idealized leaders, particularly a possible president, experiencing such personal deficits. But look we must. We can be sure this is the battle America will fight if he is elected: dependency versus autonomy, instability/weakness versus wholeness and strength.

Obama’s Adult Traits of “Wounded Child”

Let’s examine how Barack Obama’s personal issues are playing out in his public life even to this point in time much as Bill Clinton’s eventually did. How would his childhood woundedness affect his bid for the presidency—and beyond?

Neediness

• Obama’s neediness currently channeled into getting elected president. Immediately after becoming a senator he wants more, a higher office, even though admittedly inexperienced and impatient, violating even his own wise principles, he is driven to become president. Same need for power Clinton had.
• Like Clinton, Obama hides neediness in others. He wants big government, a tax-and-spend system with increased dependency on him as leader of the government. A codependent president who in effect says to the people, “Better that you feel weak and needy than me.”
• Second 2008 debate revealed major clue of economic plans in criticism of Bush post-9/11 for telling Americans to “go shopping.” Obama’s DI tells us that, if elected, he’s prepared to “go shopping” at America’s expense—high government expenditures-- undermining economic plans.
• Excessive spending/taxation fits perfectly with the warning found in Obama’s childhood parable about leper beggars—a confession of misguided economic policies that he’ll inflict on America. Parable also reveals brilliant guidance from DI: don’t give in to demanding beggars because it’s sign of weakness. He’s actually saying, don’t give into my neediness, don’t elect me.
• Admits biggest sin he struggles with is “selfishness”¹

Entitlement (and Envy)

• Obama’s revealing list of “rights” (which don’t have to be earned—they’re given): health care, college education, affirmative action, abortion, taking money from wealthy (read: I should take more of your money, you should be punished for making more money—predicting class warfare and redistribution of wealth). Wounded empty children deeply envy others more fortunate.
  
• Entitled to change basic rules of business success by levying higher taxes on businesses thus limiting capital growth, the engine which drives America’s economy. American corporations now pay the second-highest corporate tax in the world.
• The Entitled Candidate—entitled to be president without qualifications—admittedly inexperienced, lacking in political achievements.

Guilt

• On first glance Obama lacks overt character weakness similar to Clinton’s known promiscuity. Obama’s guilt will be less obvious and turn more quickly to blame. His wounded child traits more hidden, making him a more deceptive candidate including self-deception. 
• Guilt emerges in slips such as his putdown of “rural” Americans who “cling to guns and religion,” degrading attack on Sarah Palin as “a pig with lipstick,” also “above my pay grade” comment regarding abortion.
• Guilt easily turns to blame: (1) blames racist America through others—Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, etc.; (2) blames George W. Bush for war—equates with his own father who attacked him. Cannot acknowledge when Bush aggression successful and protective (i.e. surge in Iraq); (3) blames “greedy rich Americans” who have all money—remember Obama deprived child; (4) blames Bush for deprivation of health care—remember Obama abandoned by father, sees self as “damaged leper.”

Grandiosity

Injured child can go one of two ways: angry, mean behavioral problem or idealized hero child—Obama idealizes himself, as if to prove he’s OK.

• Entitled to behave as president: on European tour tries to usurp president’s role meeting with Iraqi leader and making pronouncements displaying incredible hubris, unlike any politician in American history.
• Newsweek noted, “His pitch is that he can see America as few others can, and that this ability will enable him to pull a majority of the country together and get things done…”
  
• Plans for summit involving Muslim leaders because he understands them better than other American leaders.
• Following a Chicago Sun-Times article listing Obama among those politicians who have “It”—magical political charisma—he walked through his office declaring, “See I told you.” An aide noted, “For God’s sake don’t mention that article to him…He doesn’t need any reinforcement in the IT department.”

Weakness and Waffling

• Obama said on Fox TV interview, “I will listen to General Petraeus, given the experience he’s accumulated…It would be stupid of me to ignore what he has to say.”
• In September 2007, Gen. David Petraeus testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (of which Obama is a member). “I believe Iraq’s problems will require a long-term effort,” Petraeus said. The next day Obama called for the U.S. to “immediately begin to remove our combat troops from Iraq.”
• Other examples of waffling include running for president after promising not to, pledging to not raise taxes then admitting he would raise taxes, standing by his racist pastor then disavowing him, declaring he preferred government sponsored presidential campaign funds to private funding only to resort to private funding.

Anger/ Destructiveness

• A person’s anger deep down is directly related to how much pain/anger/destruction they have experienced. Already he has implied that his pain was greater than Clinton’s. Imagine a black father leaves you (with a white mother) to return home to Africa after first marrying another woman in the U.S. having another child here, eventually divorcing and marrying for a fourth time back home. Then you learn your father actually was married in Kenya with a child and not legally divorced before marrying your mother in the U.S.—all together four marriages and nine children. Surely the huge hole in you leaves you questioning yourself. Was the problem you weren’t black enough, not African enough, not Muslim enough?
• In Audacity of Hope, Obama tells us, “I am angry about policies that consistently favor the wealthy and powerful.” Note his preoccupation with the lack of power.
• Seemingly mild-mannered on surface, Obama lives out his anger through others who serve as his secret proxy voice. Your friends speak volumes about who you are. Obama hangs out with violent men who hate America. His pastor, Jeremiah Wright, blames white America for inflicting AIDS on blacks, calling for God’s curse on America. (Obama absorbed 20 years of sermons despite yet claims to be unaware of Wright’s hatred.)
• Obama’s friend, William Ayers, was a “Weatherman”—member of radical anti-American protest group—who attacked government buildings and called for downfall of United States, escaping prison on a technicality.
• Obama’s early mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, was a black communist who told the young Obama (mentioned in Dreams From My Father) that blacks should hate whites and that Obama was just “a n-----” in America.
• Obama reveals his wavering patriotism in a quote he borrowed from Mark Twain, “Patriotism means you support your country all the time and your government when they deserve it.”  Symbolically it’s such a contradictory remark that we can better understand another Obama comment, “I’m sure going to stand up to anybody who questions my own patriotism”—and that person is his own deeper intelligence. Understandably, Obama’s loyalty to the “fatherland” has holes in it.
• Obama’s behavior suggests more anger at his father/fatherland: longstanding refusal to wear an American flag lapel pin, refusal to put his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance, and changing his American name, Barry, back to Barack.
• In his book, Audacity of Hope, Obama questioned the founders of our country regarding the history of slavery in America, “There’s a school of thought that sees the Founding Fathers only as hypocrites and the Constitution only as a betrayal of the grand ideas set forth by the Declaration of Independence.” Note his emphasis on total hypocrites, total betrayal by father figures.
• Obama’s childhood pain causes him to over read racism in others. A high-school classmate noted that in Hawaii, where everyone is some kind of minority, “Obama made everything out like it was racial.”
• His book, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and inheritance” suggests in very title real source of his “inherited” racial pain—his father’s mistreatment.

Deceit

• In his powerful criticism of the Founding Fathers (actually alluding to his own father), Obama unconsciously suggests how he will treat America as its father if elected president: major hypocrisy, major betrayal—a la Bill Clinton—only worse. Surely this fits with his childhood parable self-image of a dangerous leper who can destroy those whose lives he touches.
• He claimed that he had no awareness of Pastor Jeremiah Wright’s anti-American sentiments which surfaced in 2008 yet an earlier book on Obama described Wright as follows: his sermons “resemble left-wing political rants;” “Startling for a preacher he can be both profane and provocative;” “church is rooted in Afrocentrism;” “not shy about laying… blame on whites;” “called people who voted for George Bush ‘stupid;’” “rebellious, bombastic;”  Obama knew exactly who Wright was and what he stood for.
• Wounded children frequently resort to deceit—just as they were deceived—to express powerful emotions such as anger and blame.
• Syndicated black columnist Thomas Sowell observed Obama’s participation in “corrupt machine politics in Chicago…Obama came out…against reform candidates. Obama is running on an image that is directly the opposite of what he has been doing for two decades.”