America’s Struggle with Success

The media is abuzz with Obama’s recent “share the wealth” comment to Joe the Plumber. But the first part of his comment in the end may be far more revealing, “I don’t want to punish your success, I just want to share the wealth.” “Punish your success” offers a far broader picture of what Barack Obama is really all about. (And rarely have we seen a better example of how denial reveals the truth of a matter—taking wealth from a person and giving it to someone else who hasn’t earned it indeed punishes the successful person.)

In America, the land of opportunity, the one rule we run on is you earn your success. You make your own breaks, as the farmer teaches us “You say Amen (to God’s blessings) with your hoe.” Obama’s idea of punishing someone’s success provides a rich snapshot into his entire mindset: his entitlement plans to share the wealth will punish America, and we find hints of other ways he’ll punish America. Remember his mentor Jeremiah Wright thought America badly needed to have its success thwarted—“God damn America” he preached from the pulpit, we had 9/11 coming. Despite Obama’s reflexive cover-up rejection of Wright he knew full well what Wright was all about for years—making Wright in essence his proxy mouthpiece. (Reminds us of his friend Bill Ayers, one of the Weathermen radicals who blew up government buildings, but of course Obama denounces him, too, yet somehow he keeps picking these radical friends.)

In the end Obama is all about denying himself success because his success will be tied up with America’s success. If he brings us down several notches or worse, he fails. Why we wonder could Obama be a secret self-sabotager who in the end really can’t allow himself to succeed? The answer is not difficult. When your father walks out on you when you’re two, it leaves you with a huge empty hole deep inside you as Obama himself has told us, leaves you feeling like anything but successful--like a big time loser if the truth be known. Leaves you, too, wanting to damn him with everything inside you, because he left you feeling damned.

Then the picture of the adult Obama—ever still the wounded child—comes into focus. And we can understand why a Jeremiah Wright would resonate so with him. What a perfect substitute blasting away at the fatherland (America) instead of the father¹—instead of blaming the black father what better scapegoat than the white fatherland. Remember Wright called America the “US-KKK-A,” continually making disparaging comments about white Americans and accusing the U. S. Government of manufacturing the AIDS virus to kill black people. Somewhere in the back of young Barry Obama’s mind, he easily could have concluded that if the U.S. hadn’t had racial problems in the 1960’s his black father might never have left him.

If we think Obama won’t play a losing hand as president, we need to hear columnist Thomas Sowell who observed that Obama’s policies—both economic and foreign—are straight out of the past and both had disastrous results:

“Protecting criminals, attacking business, increasing government spending, promoting a sense of envy and grievance, raising taxes on people who are productive and subsidizing those who are not—all this is a rerun of the 1960’s. We paid a terrible price…soaring crime rates, double digit inflation, and double-digit unemployment.” And speaking of Obama’s international plans—“including the media magic of meetings between heads of state…that approach, in the name of peace, is what led to the most catastrophic war in human history.” ²

When all is said and done, Obama fits the classic fear of success/ sabotage success syndrome. In the next article we will explore another major clue to his success problems—his deep sense of entitlement.

Yet we must remember American voters are the ones who will be putting him in power, revealing how many of us are trying to sabotage America’s success. One lesson from history where national self-sabotage has replicated from nation to nation like a plague—it’s virtually all unconscious. Success blind spots are the biggest blind spots of all. Success is the slipperiest slope of all.

One last thing. As a forensic profiler and therapist, I know how valuable denial (such as “I don’t want to take away your success”) can be—all too often a verbal marker of exactly how a person unconsciously reveals the truth. Start paying attention to Obama’s denials and you’ll learn a lot about the man—and his limited dreams for America. You’ll learn the same thing from his images such as another seemingly casual comment in reference to our energy problems, “We can’t always have the thermometer at 73.” Translation: Obama is warning us he intends to cut down America’s power.