President Obama lost something invaluable last week when he weighed in on the arrest of his friend, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., saying the Cambridge police acted stupidly. He lost the presumption that he is colorblind and embraces all races and both genders equally.

This colorblindness was, perhaps, the fondest hope of the American public when we elected President Obama to our highest office.  As the son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya we hoped his election marked the ascent of a leader possessed of so much empathy, so much intelligence and such a desire to understand all perspectives and experiences that he could resonate with anyone’s needs and disenfranchise no one.

That hope has withered for many, and it will be difficult to resurrect.  The fact that President Obama remained in a church headed by a pastor (Reverend Wright) who denounced white people, together with the fact that the First Lady says she felt no pride in our country until very recently, together with the fact that President Obama nominated a woman to the Supreme Court who slurred white judges as inferior, together with the President’s recent unwarranted slur of a white police sergeant as stupid seems to reveal deep-seated anger in him and constitutes a psychological pattern of insensitivity to the feelings of Caucasians.  He is a President who now (and hopefully only temporarily) seems the least colorblind of my lifetime, a terrible irony and tragedy I certainly didn’t imagine transpiring when he announced his candidacy.

The emotions some white people are sharing with me seem to parallel the feelings that African Americans may have struggled with in the past.  They tell me that they fear President Obama resents them, but won’t say so plainly, that he considers them “less than” others, maybe even demonic (like Reverend Wright does), but won’t admit it.  This gives them, and it gives me, a sliver of insight into how painful it must have been for disenfranchised minorities for decades in this country.  But the price of that slim window on the feelings of others has been high, indeed.  For the millions of white Americans who now better understand what it feels like to doubt that the President of the United States is their President, too, our heightened empathy comes with deep sadness and not a little anxiety.

President Obama doesn’t seem to understand the full depth of what has transpired.  It can’t be glossed over with the words he shared after the Crowley fiasco: 

“This has been ratcheting up, and I obviously helped to contribute ratcheting it up.  I want to make clear that in my choice of words, I think I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department and Sgt. Crowley specifically.  And I could’ve calibrated those words differently.”

He then invited Crowley over to the White House for a beer with Professor Gates.

What we needed, as white Americans, for all Americans, was a moment less about political caution and false camaraderie and more about self-revelation.  I kept thinking, as I listened to President Obama, of how short his statement fell from the words of another great African American politician, Jesse Jackson.  During the 1984 Presidential campaign, when Jackson sought the Democratic nomination, he referred to New York City as Hymietown, a slur against Jews.  I remember him taking the podium at the Democratic Convention and apologizing.  It was 25 years ago, and I was just 22-years-old, so forgive me if I have forgotten some of the words.  Most of them are seared into my memory—these two-and-a-half decades later:

“If I have offended anyone, or renewed old fears, I am deeply sorry.  Charge it to my head and not my heart.  I am an imperfect servant.  God is not yet finished with me.”

That was plenty good enough for me.  I didn’t believe Jackson could fake a statement like that.  And I never questioned the man’s heart again. 

President Obama, we need that kind of eloquence and honesty right now.  We need you to do that kind of soul-searching and let us in on the result.

According to the latest Gallup Poll, Barack Obama’s selection of Joe Biden as his pick for vice president hasn’t yielded the bounce most candidates enjoy after announcing their running mates.  In fact, the poll shows the opposite:  McCain has erased Obama’s lead and is now ahead, 46 percent to 44 percent. 

Psychologically, the drama of a candidate for president teaming up with another leader to do battle in the last months of the election should provide a burst of enthusiasm among voters, however short-lived.  The Democratic National Convention, playing like rock music in the background, should add plenty of fuel to carry more people into the next chapter of the Obama-Biden story.

Engagements and weddings and political conventions are times for unbridled optimism.  The audience, which includes the American public in this case, is predisposed to believe that human beings joining together can be much more than any single person could ever be alone, that the glistening start of a partnership predicts sure success. 

But something is wrong, and I think I know what it is.  The Barack Obama story itself is the stuff of big, big dreams.  We’ve watched a first-term U.S. Senator capture the imagination of the nation with eloquence unparalleled in recent times, harking back to the kind of excitement John F. Kennedy generated.  We’ve watched him defy the odds again and again, to stand at the zenith of the Democratic Party.  He has stood, in fact, somehow above and beyond traditional politics, a larger than life figure, a phenomenon.  Those who embrace him hope for—maybe even expect—miracles from him.

So it should come as no surprise that selecting a respected, tested running mate like Joe Biden would slow Obama’s momentum a bit.  While the choice may reassure voters that a steady hand with vast experience will be helping chart a course through increasingly stormy economic and political seas, it also reminds us that Obama is himself a politician facing momentous challenges.  Joining hands with a longtime U.S. Senator anchors Obama, and voters, to reality.  It brings Obama back down to earth.  It makes him seem human, where he once seemed superhuman.

Only one pick would have taken Obama further beyond the normal gravity of the political universe:  Hillary Clinton.  In inviting his former rival onto the ticket, in trying to help bring the first female vice president into the White House, he would have been reaffirming the notion that he cannot be defined or limited by tradition or expectation.  He would have been saying that he could achieve anything.

Hillary Clinton joining hands with Obama was the chapter that many Americans had already written into their collective imaginations, and those imaginary pages had much more energy than the real ones we’re reading about Obama and Biden.

As we wind our way toward November, Obama has come face-to-face with this reality:  America’s expectations of a phenomenon are quite different than its expectations of a candidate.  They are limitless.  And they require constant feeding. 

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His newest book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement. Check out Dr. Ablow’s website at livingthetruth.com.