This Roger Simon piece on Obama’s psychology during the debate is, if not correct, at least interesting.
What we have before us in these debates is an almost archetypal confrontation – between a man who was and is an exceptionally good father and a man who was deserted by his.
Good fathering is the story of Mitt Romney’s life. He has five sons who are, by all accounts, devoted to him and vice-versa. These boys grew up with a father who, although wealthy and successful, worked like a demon, doted on them, and apparently devoted an extraordinary amount of time to charitable work, in which he also involved them. Indeed, I’ve never heard of a politician who did anything quite like it.
Almost the polar opposite, Barack Obama’s father abandoned him twice and then ended up an irresponsible drunken victim of multiple car crashes. This sad behavior precipitated a search by Obama that brought him in contact with several father surrogates, notably Frank Marshall Davis and Jeremiah Wright, that it would be hard to brand as anywhere near satisfactory. (Davis was a pornographer and about Wright the less said the better.) No Mitt Romneys there.
If you think this is lost on Barack Obama when he stands opposite Romney, then you think the president is stupid, which he is obviously not. But it’s worse for him yet, because he is standing opposite a father who has worked harder, has more experience, and is more knowledgeable and charitable than he and he, on some level at least, must know it.
Not only that, most of what Mitt Romney has done, including graduating simultaneously from Harvard Law and Harvard Business, is an open book, while almost everything about Obama remains purposefully hidden. (He knows this too, obviously.) Obama lives in fear of exposure – and thus in fear of Romney who, although rich, is much more the self-made man of the two, the ultimate father figure.
The face-to-face clash of these two men is almost out of Greek drama. Obama must rage against or embrace the man who represents what he most dearly needed and never had. If this really were Aeschylus or Sophocles, Obama would be caught between those conflicting goals and end up plucking his own eyes out.
I think it’s funny that people on the Right are so interested in the psychology of the President. I admit that I am too. I am always interested in the “what makes that person tick” angle. But Obama’s sychophants, oddly, don’t are one whit about his history or his psychology. They love him so much, but they don’t seem to truly care about where he comes from. If I wrote what I’m about to write on a larger stage I’m sure I’d get panned for it, but I do believe that many conservatives have a sort of sympathy for Obama that people on the left don’t have. It’s just that being a sympathetic figure is often not a quality we look for in Presidents.
While some of that unfulfilled interest comes out in the form of theories about his birth or other things that might hurt his chances of holding public office, the spark for this curiosity begins with the fact that Obama is, and tries to be, a mysterious figure. He begs analysis. I come from a family with a history of issues between fathers and sons and sons and mothers. I’ve had my problems with my father and have gone through various stages to come to terms in our relationship. I’ve also had problems with authority – being both defiant of it but also filled with feelings of inferiority in the face of it. Those two responses are coupled together. My father had his own issues with his father, and they were much more physically and emotionally impactful than Obama’s. My dad, being just a yob off the streets, had no sociological infrastructure against which to craft his story for his own betterment. Likewise, that defiance and that inferiority complex exists in him too. My dad’s relationship with his father has fostered resentment between him and his mother. So I wonder how much of that there is in Obama given that his mother yanked him around the world pursuing her dreams and putting him into relationships with other father figures and then also shunting him off to his grandparents house.
We saw some of the resentment in the debate though we don’t know its full story. Resentment is a stinky cologne, the political opposite of Hope and Change. Only by not getting to know their President can his base avoid coming to grips with that truth.
Like this:
Like Loading...
They aren’t interested in his psychology any more than they are interested in their own psychology. As far as they are concerned, they are supremely good people motivated by doing the supreme good, and he is too. Actually he’s plus-good for being un-white. Anyway, they don’t want to examine their own psychology because doing so would reveal that their beliefs are not as pure as they think, and often the result of their very serious mental/emotional/physical flaws.
foseti linked to a decent walter russel meade essay about the neo-puritanism of the left
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/10/07/romney-and-obama-dueling-bostonians/
People on the Left don’t give a shit what O did in the past, what kind of father he is or what kind of relationship he had with his parents.
All they care about is: Can he keep the gravy train of taxpayer money flowing, and will he use his position to help us impose our vision of socialist perfection on the USA?
The answers to these questions was YES for the last four years. The debate was the beginning of a crack in that utter certainty; now maybe Obama isn’t going to be able to keep the government money and sinecure jobs flowing. Maybe his weakness means that the socialist agenda is threatened. Because of this the Left may throw him overboard. To put it simply, not even the Left wants to back a loser.
I usually hate this kind of armchair psychology, but I think this may have some merit. There is a not-so-secret society of men who have been propped up from birth by the confidence instilled by an approving father. Obama is not in that society, and it is impossible to not know that you are not in that society. Many conquer this over their life, but Obama’s reliance on personal grievance as a political philosophy suggests that he has not.
Barack Obama senior was a total loser and Barack Obama Jr. worships him. This is why I’m not sure putting the effort into a half white kid is even worth it.
Obama has always appeared to be the typical mixed race or intellectual black Ivy kid. The foreign bloodlines and childhood make it a bit different. Sailer has the best grasp of him out of journos, but others might get him but cant say it for fear of cathedral excommunication. Obama’s story still is to be finished. I think he’ll squeak out a win unless he completely falls apart in the next month (or the stock market tanks). He’ll be mid 50s if he leaves in Jan of 2017. I see him really breaking down if he loses this year or becoming a depressed recluse if he leaves in shame or with his whole party and/or nation against him in ’17. I just dont see him doing the Clinton or even Papa Bush elder statesman role. While I think he’ll win, an election loss leading to depression would make for one hell of a third part to an autobiographical trilogy. “Rejected Native Son” or some other dumb title sounds right. An @ss covering autobiography of his ’08 campaign through his loss would be fitting for his self centered personality.
Obama isn’t Darth Sidious – that’s Valerie Jarrett, the real eminence grise in the regime.
She even tried to save Bin Laden on multiple occasions, until Panetta and Clinton finally gave the order to proceed without taking the time to check with Obama first.
@Camlost
In a pragmatic sense.
What good has Osama’s death done us? A death that we couldn’t even have the pleasure of confirming since they dumped him into the water.
your analysis is worthless without looking at white privilege and systemic racism which is pronoted by our white suypremacist patriarchy
Anti-Racist you introduced us to Mr. Leonard Pitts the writer. We did research and the Brother said Cry Me A River to uppity racists over Knoxville dead white boy and white female. Cold blooded Soldier Don’t Give A Fuck Yo. You have the cold blood to support MR. Pitts.
Leonard Pitts is a dumbass.
What good has Osama’s death done us?
Not much good at all.
But I hate to see Obama basking in the credit for it, when he really didn’t want to order the mission in the first place.
white boy camlost is afraid of what he does not understand. And he does not understand the Black Heart of Mr. Leonard Pitts who tells racists to Cry Me A River over dead white boy and dead white female in knoxville. Disrespect of goodness will be handled. Anti-Racist understands.
how is Leonard Pitts a dumbass?
are Pulitzer prize winners dumbasses now?
Anti-Racist you understand Brother.
“anti-racist 10/09/2012 at 7:54 pm
how is Leonard Pitts a dumbass?:
are Pulitzer prize winners dumbasses now?”
Yep. And so are Nobel Peace Prize winners.
Anti/Promoting: are y’all familiar with Great Books For Men?
OT: News on the ringer front: http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2012/10/obamas-ring-there-is-no-god-but-allah.html
So wait… the man who is President is a bitter, angry, emotionally and psychologically crippled loser from a broken home? Geez, you better find a more convincing example of the negative impact of fatherlessness than someone who is THE PRESIDENT. Lack of a dad didn’t hold him back much.
I guess you might take the perspective, “imagine what Obama might have achieved with a positive male role model in his early life… he’d be a much better President now…”
It’s just that Barack’s father was such a small part of his life, and yet he wrote a book about him. Maybe Barack would have been better off being sent to Africa to live with his father. Maybe he would have been happier.
“So wait… the man who is President is a bitter, angry, emotionally and psychologically crippled loser from a broken home? Geez, you better find a more convincing example of the negative impact of fatherlessness than someone who is THE PRESIDENT. Lack of a dad didn’t hold him back much.”
He didn’t do that by himself.
As with Clinton, the lack of a Father is a crippling blow to normal character development- in a sane world it would be disqualifier for higher office. But as we all know by now, the people who pull the strings behind the scenes need people who are damaged in key spots so that they may better control, compromise and manipulate them via their flawed character and desperate need for acceptance and affirmation.
Like most people from broken homes carrying the additional burden of rootlessness and mixed racial heritage, Obama seems to me to be at home in a divided house. His rhetorical pandering aside, Obama has presided over the greatest rift creation in this country since 1860 and given a second term will do his best to do to the White population of the United States what he’s done with his own Mother/White side of his family- use it up for all of its resources and then erase it from memory. And he has the handlers that are only too happy to facilitate him for their own ends.
Camlost,
Geez, I didn’t realize Valerie Jarrett was that bad. She was born in a Muslim country, my guess is she felt sorry for Bin Laden.