I think the uncertainty of his own paternity is at the root of this character. (I'm not a psychiatrist but I deal with a lot of crazy people :-) ).
The whole book (Dreams, I mean) deals with this subject is an obtuse way. Who was he? What was he? What does it mean I am?
Coming from a really, REALLY sick family background, shuffled from pillar to post, a mother who lusted after dark men (even her son?), a grandfather who did drugs with a pedophile communist (did he pimp his own daughter to stay close to Frank?) - how could he not be a mess?
But since he is clearly a high-achieving mess, he must have that one crystalline secret inside - hard, like a diamond - to keep him going.
Hatred of America and the wish to destroy her, to revenge himself on his whiteness and his oceanic mother and to justify the man who raped her - would fill the bill nicely.
Churchill described Hitler in the opening pages of
The Gathering Storm as: (from memory) "a maniac a ferocious genius, the embodiment of the most virulent hatreds that ever corroded the human breast-corporal Hitler."
If Obama is possessed of half the demons which you describe and with which I largely agree, the internal tension within the man must be centrifugal and ready to break out at any time. Yet by all accounts he is cool under every circumstance. Either our armchair psychoanalysis is faulty or Obama is headed for an explosion.
Hitler's demons drove him at the end to fits and literally chewing the carpet. Like Hitler in the early days, Obama has experienced no serious frustration in obtaining his political will. We will have to see.
