Why would Warren Buffett be so vocal in his support of Barack Obama, whose entire agenda is oriented toward the destruction of the very rules and policies that made his great success possible? Here is one hypothesis:

From Alice Schroeder’s brilliant new book The Snowball we know that:

a) Buffett is extremely driven. He makes unstinting, superhuman efforts to get what he wants. Schroeder highlights this urge to “collect” (stocks, companies, media power) repeatedly in her biography.

b) Buffett is very concerned with “keeping score”. According to Schroeder, he pays a lot of attention to his rank as an investor, and his place in the ranks of wealthy persons.

Also, Buffett's partner, Charlie Munger, has written brilliantly about the "incentive bias": if you want to understand human behavior, look at the incentives. One might assume that Buffett would rigorously follow the dictates of the "incentive bias". Why not?

Now, seemingly, Buffett has achieved all possible earthly goals: he is the world’s wealthiest man, he flies around the world in his own jet with beautiful female journalists, he has made the largest gift to charity in history. And, perhaps above all, he is known as the greatest investor in history.

So far.

So, what final victory is left in the face of death? That victory would be to remain the world’s greatest investor FOREVER.

Buffett has alluded to his view of his portfolio as his “Mona Lisa”. His work of art. But works of art cannot be superceded, while, generally, any investment track record can indeed be superceded. In short: there may be only one way to achieve that final, immortal goal:

Use resources to change the game of Capitalism itself so that no one, at any future time, can duplicate his record.

One could, literally, “rest easy” after that final goal is achieved. While this is mere conjecture, one can possibly infer this motivation from Schroeder’s probing portrait.

Manny Mendelson