Long before the hoops injury, Barack Obama was the walking wounded. And unlike most leaders, those hits to his brandname, influence, and power didn't come primarily as a result from bad advice from his inside circle of advisers. The wounds were self-inflicted.
The smartest kid on the block Obama never seemed to have grown up. One definition of "grown up" comes from Truman Capote's short story "New York." In it the narrator gets the gestalt that coming of age means you get it that not everyone loves you. Obama didn't seem to get that.
However, he still can. He can lift himself out of himself and have that key internal shift great leaders do. They become, as St. Francis of Assisi put it, "self-forgetting." Here is his famous prayer about liberating the self from the self.
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