In Indiana, Obama Dreams Not of His Father

I just watched Obama’s speech at the Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Indianapolis. Obama’s call to sacrifice and idealism is exalted, especially compared to Hillary’s claylike intonations, her gas-tax pandering  and countless references to "oil companies." In telling his own story, Obama cited the lives of his grandparents, the Dunhams, in a small town in Kansas, his mother’s struggles as a single mom on food stamps, and his father-in-law Mr. Robinson’s going to work every day despite multiple sclerosis, putting his kids thru good colleges. Inspiring. But he made no reference to his Kenyan father, Barack Obama, who is at the center of Obama’s first book, Dreams From My Father. Maybe Obama has decided that his bespectacled intellectual father is too exotic to be mentioned now that he is reaching out to working people. Or maybe it has to do with Rev. Wright. Obama mentioned Jeremiah Wright as "a former pastor," in a litany of trivial incidents that have gotten in the way of real issues. It was curt and dismissive. But Wright was a father figure for Obama, whose own father abandoned him; I wonder if the recent separation from Wright has opened the old father-wound. Obama’s a sphinx psychologically; we’ll be studying this stuff for many years.