America’s Struggle with Success

Let’s continue our examination of the way Barack Obama’s personal issues play out in his public life. If he’s elected president, how would his childhood trauma affect his ability to lead?

Obama’s Book Dreams from My Father Provides Major Clues

• His book, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and inheritance” reveals a growing rage so typical of the anger of a traumatized child. He reports the misdirected hate doesn’t go away, “It formed a counter-narrative buried deep within each person and at the center of which stood white people.”
• Betrayed by his father, Obama returns to Kenya as a young adult and there magically, “For the first time in my life, I felt the comfort, the firmness of identity that a name might provide.” He attempts to fill his emptiness by assuming his African father’s name—a temporary fix but no match for his deep pain. This is also a well known psychological phenomenon called “identification with the aggressors” where you become like those aggressive people who hurt you to master your pain.
• Having only brief contact with his father his entire life, he writes, “It was into my father’s image, the black man, son of Africa, that I’d packed all the attributes I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcom, DuBois and Mandela.” Read Obama tried to fill the giant hole in himself with the writings of these men and others immersing himself in writings of radical blacks.
• His favorite black writer was Malcolm X. Obama appears to be warning us, foreseeing the future. Does America want a Malcolm X for president?
• At one point, Obama discounts rejects racial integration-- it is “a one way street” with blacks being “assimilated into the dominant culture, not the other way around.”
• Personal writings are extremely revealing. This earlier book suggests more of his deepest truest feelings on matters, that he doesn’t comprehend that the real source of his pain lies in his early father abandonment, and that he’s desperately trying to warn America how distorted his thinking really is.

Is Obama Warning That He’s a Closet Racist?

• He has close racist friends including his longstanding pastor. His wife’s writings suggest racist leanings.
• He put down his own white grandmother, as a “typical white person” because of what he saw as misguided views on race.
• Again from Audacity of Hope, Obama writes, “We know how high-flying words can be deployed in the service of cynical aims, and how the noblest of sentiments can be subverted in the name of power, expedience, greed, or intolerance.”
• Obama’s emphasis on intolerance raises question again if he’s a closet racist.

How Could Obama’s Anger Play Out as President?

• We must continually keep Obama’s childhood story/parable before us warning us that he is a “damaged leper” suggesting enormous potential for destroying others.
• Obama could greatly disrupt an economically vulnerable America with indulgent spending and undermining American businesses via taxation.
• He could show excessive sympathy for American enemies, in particular failing to stand up to the Muslim world such as Iran which is attempting to gather nuclear materials for a bomb and inflict a type of leprosy on millions.
• Never forget, Obama identifies with Muslims at least unconsciously. Both his father and stepfather were Muslims, he attended a Muslim school in Jakarta, he has said that no one understands them like he does, he recently made a crucial slip about his “Muslim faith” (I am not suggesting he is a conscious Muslim), and changed his first name back to his Muslim name, Barack Hussein Obama.
• His profile suggests Obama is potentially one dangerous man.
• John McCain appears to be picking up on threat that an Obama presidency would represent when McCain stated on October 10 that Obama was “a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States.” Such denials are common DI clues to the truth. Deep down, McCain knows Obama is dangerous. (We will soon explore McCain’s own retreats from success.)

The Bottom Line: Barack Obama has a Success Problem

• He has not approached the office of president as a deserving, experienced candidate who has “paid his dues.”
• Like Bill Clinton, his immediate Democratic predecessor, he reveals characteristics of grievous childhood trauma.
• Compensating for his great pain, he has demonstrated deficient character traits including: neediness/entitlement, codependency, grandiosity, weakness, indecisiveness, inexperience, blaming, deceitfulness and encouraging others to express his anger in extreme ways.
• Remember Bill Clinton, with similar emotional pain, had huge success problems manifested in self-sabotaging behavior—repeated lying, reckless impulsivity, degraded the office of the president, degraded himself and his family and, despite his intellectual brilliance and enormous personal gifts, compromised the presidency…and America.
• If Obama has personal success problems as Clinton did, our nation will have major success problems under his leadership.

America’s Success Problem: Will We Continue to Self-Sabotage?

• University of Oklahoma history Professor J. Rufus Fears observed, “Great nations rise and fall because of human decisions made by individual leaders.”^[1]
• America stands on a precarious perch with a vulnerable economy, radical Muslim terrorists casing targets to attack, energy dependence on foreign countries, and undisciplined liberals undermining core values.
• Obama’s self-profile—provided primarily by his DI in his own words—suggests that choosing him to be the most powerful man in America would violate the most basic rule of success.
• Again, would we re-elect Bill Clinton knowing what he put us through as a nation? Take it as a warning about Obama.

Summary

We will look closely at Obama for more of the hallmark traits of the wounded empty child: insatiable neediness, entitlement, grandiosity, guilt, selfishness, deceit, blame and anger.

• Like Clinton, Obama hides neediness in others. He wants big government, tax- and-spend policies with increased dependency on him as government leader. A codependent president who in effect says to the people, “Better you feel weak and needy than me.”
• Second debate revealed major clue of economic plans in his criticism of Bush post-9/11 for telling Americans to “go shopping”—actually meaning Obama is prepared to “go shopping” at America’s expense. Again his DI warns us about his undermining economic plans.
• Obama’s “childhood parable” reveals typically brilliant guidance from DI: don’t give into demanding beggars, sign of weakness. He’s really saying, don’t give in to my neediness, don’t elect me.
• Admits biggest sin he struggles with is “selfishness.”
• Guilt emerges in slips such as Obama’s putdown of “rural” Americans who “cling to guns and religion” and degrading attacks on women (Sarah Palin— “a pig with lipstick”).
• Guilt easily turns to blame: (1) blames racist America through others; (2) blames George Bush for attacking others—like father who attacked him; (3) blames “greedy rich Americans”—a blame traceable to Obama’s early deprivation; (4) blames government for deprivation of health care—actually a reference to Obama’s own unhealthy self-image.
• Entitled to behave as president: on European tour tries to usurp president’s role by meeting with Iraqi leader and making pronouncements.
• 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 (his caps) only as hypocrites and the Constitution only as a betrayal of the grand ideas set forth by the Declaration of Independence.” Thinly disguised reference to his being enslaved to the pain of total abandonment by his own father experienced as a betraying hypocrite.
• Obama’s childhood pain causes him to over-read racism in others. High-school classmate noted in Hawaii, where everyone is some kind of minority, that “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 racial pain—his father’s mistreatment. The title hints at the actual subject of Obama’s concerns, My Father: A Story of My Racial Problems.

(Deceit)

• In his powerful criticism of the Founding Fathers in actuality alluding to his own father, Obama also suggests how he will treat America as its father if elected president: major hypocrisy, major betrayal—a la Bill Clinton. Fits with his childhood parable self-image of a dangerous leper who can damage others.
• Again wounded children frequently resort to deceit—just as they were deceived.
• Again from Audacity of Hope, Obama writes, “We know how high-flying words can be deployed in the service of cynical aims, and how the noblest of sentiments can be subverted in the name of power, expedience, greed, or intolerance.”
• Obama’s emphasis on intolerance raises question again if he’s a closet racist.
• He has close racist friends including his longstanding pastor. His wife’s writings suggest racist leanings.
• He put down his own white grandmother who raised him, as a “typical white person.”

(Obama’s Book Dreams from My Father Provides Major Clues)

• His book, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and inheritance” reveals a growing rage typical of the anger of a traumatized child. He reports the misdirected hate doesn’t go away, “It formed a counter-narrative buried deep within each person and at the center of which stood white people.”
• Betrayed by his father, Obama returns to Kenya as a young adult and there magically, “For the first time in my life, I felt the comfort, the firmness of identity that a name might provide.” He attempts to fill his emptiness by assuming his African father’s name—a temporary fix but no match for his profound pain. This is also a well-known psychological phenomenon called “identification with the aggressors” in which, to master your pain, you become like those aggressive people who hurt you.
• Having only brief contact with his father his entire life, he writes, “It was into my father’s image, the black man, son of Africa, that I’d packed all the attributes I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcom, DuBois and Mandela.” Obama tried to fill the giant hole in himself with the writings of these men and others immersing himself in writings of radical blacks.
• His favorite black writer was Malcolm X. Obama appears to be warning us, foreseeing the future. Does America want a Malcolm X for president?

(Obama points to his own success problems)

• He has not come to the office of president as a deserving, experienced, “paid-his-dues” candidate.
• Remember Bill Clinton in the end had a success problem. With similar emotional pain to Obama’s, he self-sabotaged—punishing himself and compromising the presidency and America.
• If Obama has success problems, prone to unconsciously attack America as Clinton was, we will have major success problems under his leadership.

(America’s Continuing Success Problem?)

• America is at a precarious place—a vulnerable economy, terrorist enemies looking for opportunities to attack us, energy dependence on foreign countries, and undisciplined liberals undermining core values.
• Obama’s self-profile provided largely by his deeper intelligence in his own words suggests he’s warning us not to elect him president because of the threat his powerful and unstoppable emotional baggage presents to America.
• Again, would we re-elect Bill Clinton knowing what he put this nation through? Take it as a warning about Obama.