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Analyzing Obama: What is the president thinking?

Wed Oct 12, 2011 / Politics

Lately, it appears that President Barack Obama has all but given up on trying to work with Republicans.

The conciliatory "let's work these things out" tone that has marked much of Obama's first two years in office has been replaced by a tougher, more resolute "pass my bill now" approach as he tries to win re-election.

But can the two Obamas pull it off?

According to two psychoanalysts who have studied the president, it may make some sense if you look into the man.

In a pair of upcoming books, two noted scholars have tried to psychoanalyze Obama -- through his writings, words and appearances -- without ever having talked to him.

Dr. Justin Frank, a psychiatrist who teaches clinical psychiatry at George Washington University, said he thinks what's happening with the president goes beyond the shift from governing and into campaigning. To him, it's like seeing two different personas.

When he's president, Frank said, Obama is trying to take care of everybody while smoothing out sharp differences. It's how his mind is wired.

"As a candidate, he's much more easily able to split his world into good and bad, us and them, and run against something. But it's much harder for him to be against something -- when he's president," said Frank, who has written a book called "Obama on the Couch" (Free Press), which comes out October 18.

Stanley Renshon, a political scientist and psychoanalyst at the City University of New York Graduate Center, disagrees with Frank. He sees one Obama -- not two.

"From Obama's earliest time, he's talked the talk of moderation, but he has in other ways been extremely harsh on the opposition, and that has carried over (into his presidency). ... He can be rough and tough," said Renshon, who has an upcoming book called "Barack Obama and the Politics of Redemption" (Routledge). "The idea of 'Geez, let's all get together' I think really misses the mark on Obama."

What these authors know of Obama is largely drawn from the public domain -- from the president's richly detailed memoir, "Dreams From My Father," and from biographies of him and of his mother. And from the president's own words -- and deeds -- played out in public every day. Neither has talked to, interviewed or treated the president.

Frank is a self-professed "left-wing" liberal -- and he doesn't really hide that he would like to help Obama avoid the fate of being a one-term president.

He wants to explain the apparent disconnect between Candidate Obama and President Obama, a disconnect he feels his supporters see.

"I think what he meant by change and what they were hoping for change are completely different things," said Frank, who also wrote "Bush on the Couch" (Harper), about President George W. Bush. "He meant change in terms of civility, responsiveness and inclusiveness. They meant change in terms of a government that's going to be more aggressive, that's going to take care of people, that's going to do the kinds of things George Bush didn't do for eight years."

Frank said he believes Obama's idea of change comes from his complicated childhood.

"He's mixed race -- he was brought up by ...a white mother and white grandparents -- and he also came from a broken home. He lost both his father and his stepfather."

According to his memoir, the president remembers his Kenyan father as a brilliant, charismatic man -- and an absent father. Obama had a mythic image of his father in his early childhood. But after the age of 2, Obama only saw his father once, for a few weeks.

In Obama's book, he also talks about his mother, Ann Dunham, an idealist who fought against discrimination and any barriers that separated people.

And she focused intently on her son when she was with him. But she also left her son -- or sent him away -- at critical points of his young life, according to biographies of the president and his mother.

"So he's always been trying to heal splits, and see one America and see everything together," Frank said.

"If you're half-black and half-white in a highly racially charged environment ... then you've got to figure out how do you bring all these things together in yourself, but also how do you help bring it together outside of yourself," Obama told Charlie Rose after his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

Frank said he thinks that once Obama became president, his quest for unity was the thing that drove him more than anything else. He said he believes that quest grew out of Obama's unresolved feelings over his father and mother.

"I think he has a deep-seated need to see bipartisanship as a form of healing his own internal divisions and psychic divisions," Frank said.

Frank even tries to give it a name: "obsessional bipartisan disorder."

That's how he describes Obama's conciliatory approach to Republicans over the past 2½ years: on tax cuts for the wealthy, on the health care law, on the deficit and debt ceiling.

But Renshon, the author of the other book on Obama, said he doesn't buy that argument.

"I think it's ridiculous and dead wrong," Renshon said of Frank's conclusions.

Renshon describes himself politically as a middle-of-the-road moderate. He said he has voted for Democrats and Republicans.

Renshon said he doesn't find any "presidential disorders" in Obama. He said he thinks Obama is driven by a need for redemption and fairness, grown partly out of his history with his father and mother.

"Obama lost track of his mother and felt guilty when she died," Renshon said. "So she got elevated to the pedestal to take his father's place. And how do you honor the fact your mother has now been put on a pedestal? He adopted what she says was a signature issue for her, which was fairness. So that's become a core way of understanding the world for Obama."

Frank argues there are parallels between Obama's inability to accept division in America and Americans' inability to see anything else -- polarization, red and blue.He said he thinks both sides need healing.

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