Barack Obama's Need for Power

It is normal for politicians to display a trait that the psychologists David McClelland and Henry A. Murray called the need for power. The power need is not problematic unless, of course, it is combined with anti-social or sociopathic patterns. Of course, many politicians display these traits as well. Mr. Obama has repeatedly struck me as a conscienceless liar. His association with Bill Ayers, an alleged felon, Rezko, and two outlandish preachers, Wright and Pfleger, raise red flags stamped with the letter "s" for anti-social.

I received two releases this morning that Obama has already been displaying embarrassingly excessive power needs. First, Bob Robbins forwarded a youtube link to an American Issues Project ad that questions Obama's link to terrorist and progressive educator Bill Ayers. Instead of answering the ad, reports Worldnet Daily, Mr. Obama:

"is warning TV stations and asking the Justice Department to intervene in an attempt to block the airing of an ad by a non-profit group that links him to an unrepentant domestic terrorist."

I wonder how Mr. Obama will react to criticism should he be elected president. Will we see a renewal of the Alien and Sedition Act?

As well, Andy Martin just sent this press release:

>"In my opinion, Obama has a character flaw that compels him to equate differences of opinion with threats to his personal security. He has manipulated the Secret Service into a form of Soviet secret police. To protect him from his imaginary demons.

>"Dana Milbank of the Washington Post wrote recently that Obama now has a "security bubble" larger than President Bush's. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/roughsketch/ Obama only became the official candidate this week. Milbank aptly called Obama the "presumptuous candidate." The bubble will no doubt grow. If Obama is elected--heaven forefend--the bubble will in time come to encompass all of downtown Washington. Who knows what threats could lurk beyond the horizon against a "President Obama?" Better to lock down America than risk Obama.

>"Fear is now the driving force in presidential politics and the presidency. No security measure is too extreme to merit rejection by the Secret Service. Our leaders become more and remote from the led. Is this healthy?

>"When you combine Mr. Obama's paranoia about threats to himself, with his equally self-destructive passion for control and secrecy, we have the making of America's first dictator. An African-American version of Richard Nixon. Democrats were the party that battled President Bush over FISA, but Obama defected from his party and voted for FISA amendments that gave greater power to U. S. intelligence and security agencies, and the president himself.

When you combine Mr. Obama's odd secrecy and lying about his upbringing and adoption; his inclination to associate with fringe, lawless characters, his aggresive efforts to suppress anti-Obama advertisements, and the taste for lying expressed in his book, I am deeply concerned about the mainstream media's incompetent inability to ask questions about Mr. Obama's character. If Obama does shatter democracy, it will be because Americans have allowed their institutions, to include the media but also party politics, dominance by factions and special interest groups and excessive federal power, to rot and wither.