Barack Obama has a square from Neptune to the Sun in his chart.

Neptune, the planet that is shrouded in mists and mystery, is a difficult planet to have in challenging aspect to one’s Sun, the essential Self. I know this for a fact, because Neptune sits right on my own Sun in Libra. The challenging aspect from Neptune to the Sun makes it difficult for others to see you as you are; those Neptune mists obscure the rays of the Sun/Self and create a situation where others can easily create fantasies and ilusions (Neptune) about who they think you are. Later they may decide that the Neptune/Sun person was false, rather than admit to their own misconceptions and failure to see clearly what was there all along.

There is no better example of this than a man I knew quite a few years ago when I was single. I knew him for about five years before he asked me out. We dated for a couple of months, and then, in a fury, he said to me, “For five years I’ve had a fantasy about you, and you’re nothing like I imagined.”

Many of us have done the same thing with Barack Obama. Despite the fact that Obama’s positions were clear in position papers on his website, we fell in love with his beautiful voice and the inspiration of coming together for change. It never occurred to us that in uniting the country compromises would have to be made to our cherished principles.

Gail Collins had a great column in the New York Times last weekend called “The Audacity of Listening.” She writes,

I know, I know. You’re upset. You think the guy you fell in love with last spring is spending the summer flip-flopping his way to the right. Drifting to the center. Going all moderate on you. So you’re withholding the love. Also possibly the money.

I feel your pain. I just don’t know what candidate you’re talking about.

Think back. Why, exactly, did you prefer Obama over Hillary Clinton in the first place? Their policies were almost identical — except his health care proposal was more conservative. You liked Barack because you thought he could get us past the old brain-dead politics, right? He talked — and talked and talked — about how there were going to be no more red states and blue states, how he was going to bring Americans together, including Republicans and Democrats.

Exactly where did everybody think this gathering was going to take place? Left field?
When an extremely intelligent politician tells you over and over and over that he is tired of the take-no-prisoners politics of the last several decades, that he is going to get things done and build a “new consensus,” he is trying to explain that he is all about compromise. Even if he says it in that great Baracky way.

There’s no doubt that on June 23, when Obama went through a double Mars/Uranus whammy (with transiting Uranus (radical change, revolution) opposing Mars (drive, desire, aggressive instincts) in his chart and transiting Mars conjunct Uranus in his chart) he did a whole lot of flip-flopping. Less important to me personally was the reversal on public finance reform (I do, after all, want him to get elected) than his signing of the FISA bill granting immunity to telecom companies in a clear violation of his earlier pledge. And I was angry that it took him a week to communicate to his supporters why he had done so. But I wasn’t surprised, because when we’re in a big Mars/Uranus event we are feeling rebellious, even reckless. We’re on a mission and no one will stop us.

Transiting Uranus has been stationary in this move against Obama’s Mars since May, and it is just now beginning to retrograde back out of range. The final hit of this cycle will occur in March of 2009. During this same period transiting Jupiter (expansion, optimism) has been harmoniously aspecting Obama’s Mars and he is more confident than ever before.

Obama’s Neptune/Sun square made it easy to believe that he would be the ideal leader we have all been waiting for, the man who could be all things to all people. Now we know that is not the case. Still, the fact is that in moving to the center to facilitate the important changes, like ending the war and stopping the flood of wealth and security away from the middle class, we may have to forfeit some of our personal agendas.

This video of Obama’s speech on the war shows that he is still the guy we voted for.