ONE PERSPECTIVE: On Obama, I Ching and pundits agree

By Stephen B. Young The Daily Record Newswire Last week, a respected national poll showed Barack Obama and Mitt Romney in a tie for voter support: Each man was preferred by 47 percent of those polled. That result was an improvement for Romney and a decline in support for the president. Romney is now raising more money per month than the president. The race is basically now dead-even; either man can win. Who will win? Curious and as a Friday afternoon diversion, I consulted an ancient Chinese book of political insight, the I Ching. The I Ching has been used for many purposes, but one of its original aims was to serve as an insightful guidebook for political leaders helping them choose advantageous courses of action. I was taught something of how to interpret the I Ching in Vietnam by Mr. Duong Thai Ban, a master of divination who was a close friend of my father-in-law, Mr. Pham Do Binh, known more widely by his pen name of Nhat Chuong. I was then serving in Vietnam with the CORDS program of rural development and pacification where, to do my job well, I needed to understand Vietnamese culture and thinking. I have dabbled in I Ching studies ever since, last year publishing in China a guidebook for business using the I Ching to provide insights into corporate social responsibility. Now, when I cast the I Ching last Friday afternoon using the recommended three copper pennies to get the lines, I was presented with hexagram No. 1 for President Obama and hexagram No. 5 for Mitt Romney. A hexagram contains 6 lines, either solid or broken, and is a metaphor for the flow of cosmic energy shaping our future at that very moment. The idea behind the I Ching is to align your actions with the flow of destiny as revealed in the hexagrams. The president's hexagram contained a moving line, which indicates a possible transformation in his situation to hexagram No. 10. Romney's Hexagram also contained a moving line which indicated movement in his situation to the circumstances associated with Hexagram No. 63. After considering all four hexagrams, I concluded that Mitt Romney will win the election. Briefly, my analysis is that the advice given to Obama by the I Ching is be a person of great vision, of courage, a pioneer who steadfastly moves forward to initiate some course of action. He would be most fortunate to be at the beginning, to stimulate something, to fertilize that which will grow or blossom in the future. This is not a hexagram that matches the situation of a man already elected to office, seeking re-election based on past accomplishments. Rather, it is one more fit for a candidate new to politics, seeking an initial opportunity to lead. Thus Obama's actual situation does not align with the substance of auspicious future events. The I Ching revealed a mismatch between his aspirations and his destiny. Second, and more important, Obama has not demonstrated that he is the kind of man who can accomplish what Hexagrams No. 1 and No. 10 tell us needs to be done. I'll get back to this later but, briefly, he is not deeply inner-directed. The auspicious circumstances exposed by Hexagrams No. 1 and No. 10 cannot be closely associated with his inner energy and character. The fit between Romney and his two hexagrams, No. 5 and No. 63, is much better. There is a close alignment between what the hexagrams indicate needs to be done to succeed and the core persona driving Mitt Romney forward. Hexagram No. 5 speaks to one who is moving with the flow of time, embarking on a significant enterprise, whose outer and inner dimensions are in accord one with the other. This person's circumstance is to fix his or her attention on what is required, and wait for the right moment to move forward. It fits one who can wait on events while serving larger ends and the needs of others over self. The hexagram indicates the presence of something growing, shining, something that has been tested and is now in a propitious position, that is in possession of the Tao, that is ready for the harvest. When we shift from Hexagram No. 5 to Romney's follow-on hexagram, No. 63, we find additional favorable trends in play. The person under the aura of this hexagram is already wading in the stream of events, stepping forward to advantage. Romney is a manager; he knows how to fix his attention steadily on what needs to be done. He sticks to his script. He has been tested in the primaries. He has waited for some years to be the presidential candidate of his party. He is ready for the harvest. Now if it turns out that this reading of the I Ching is correct and Barack Obama loses the election, we will be able to say that this past month -- June 2012 -- was when fortune shifted against him. Simply put, last month a new sense crystallized among opinion makers of who Barack Obama really is -- and he was found wanting as a leader for tough times. We can say that many come to realize that there is not a lot of "there there"; that Obama is more brand than substance, that his campaign is about "Brand Obama" the image and not about a vision for the country that stokes his inner fires and makes him a leader of substance. Noted by many was President Obama's 54-minute speech of mid-June in Cleveland that was to "reframe" his presentation of who he is as a candidate. But observers noted the speech was not a "reframing" but saw the country only through the same old tinted lenses of partisan rhetoric. His speech was more about what is wrong with the Republicans than what is right with him -- that is, beyond his opposition to the Republicans. He has since run an attack campaign offering little insight into what he can achieve on his own. Similarly, in the solicitation letter I received from him asking for money to support the Democratic National Committee, the president mostly told me that we must step up to stop the Republicans from "throwing rocks to slow us down and obstruct progress." There was a brief mention of health care, new consumer protection legislation, and an end to the war in Iraq. Nothing new about some compelling agenda for the next 4 years if re-elected -- just investing more in education, getting more young people into science and engineering to compete against China and India, protecting Social Security, and higher taxes on the wealthy. Ryan Lizza, performing the office of a friend to the president, wrote in the New Yorker of Obama's second term vision but was openly modest in what he could only infer from bits and pieces of insight about what the president would seek to do if re-elected. Not a big "there" at all. David Maraniss' book on the young Obama was published, a text which did not polish the president's image for dedication and firm purposes. But according to Michael Barone of the American Enterprise Institute, Obama has held more fundraisers than his four predecessors combined. There is a big "there" with him where money is concerned. The day before a fundraiser in Hollywood, the president suddenly "evolved" in his thinking on what it means to be married. He then rather obviously cut a special deal with Hispanics on deportations, raising suspicions that his highest form of leadership is more coalition building among special constituencies, including Wall Street and public employee unions. Yes, every presidential candidate needs money and votes. But the important question for the country is, what will he or she give in return? A story appeared that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is kept by the White House staff on a short leash. The effort to strenuously help the Afghan people develop a capacity for self-defense and self-development was abandoned with the sudden reassignment of our commander Marine General John Allen, who understood exactly how to defeat an insurgency and really wanted to win such a war. G8 and G20 summits came and went with nothing accomplished to invigorate the world's economy. Not a lot of foreign policy "there" there at all. But a lot of image control. Most tellingly for me was the cover story in the June 18th Bloomberg Businessweek on Jim Messina, Obama's campaign manager. The theme of the story was marketing "Brand" Obama, based on Messina's study sessions with Steven Spielberg, Eric Schmidt of Google, and Steve Jobs and other masters of how to use media to move consumers to Anna Wintour on how to up-scale the products sold by the campaign to co-brand Obama with chic, hip, gotta-have-one, designs from trend-setting designers. No more T-shirts but $85 hope and change purses, $65 "his" aprons for use at the grill, and $35 woofie onesies for your dog while satiating the voter market with social networking. Messina was trained to run a campaign, all right -- just not one with a lot of intellectual, policy, or national security substance, more like getting people to visit the Mall of America more often. It's a campaign that does not square with what the I Ching recommends that Obama needs to do to win. But it is a campaign well-suited for a man who is not sure of where he really stands or what he really wants to do for the country. Or, perhaps most sadly, who he really is. Published: Fri, Jul 20, 2012