The Gospel According to Obama

The fervent support for Barack Obama verges on religious faith.

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What was once an object of curiosity and even amusement has become an at times embarrassing example of national demagoguery.

The fervour with which some supporters of Barack Obama speak of their chosen candidate has transcended the boundary of enthusiasm and become a volatile strain of zealotry.

"Is this such a bad thing?" some have asked in response. "Isn't it great that people believe so much?" Indeed, it is a good thing when people believe in the possibility and the promise of politics.

But the so-called Obama mania phenomenon is not about the promise of politics, it's about the supposed redemption offered by one man, and it represents a misunderstanding of the idea of the political.

For years conservatives have decried the secularisation of America, and particularly of the American left, claiming that the loss of religious beliefs has left a gaping void in our society, leaving us bereft not only of a source of meaning but of an important glue holding together the social fabric.

The religiosity of Obamamania - the tears, the fainting, the proclamations of being "overpowered" by his presence, the band at a rally playing Obamaleujah, the creation of iconography with his likeness - would seem to suggest that those on the right were, well, right.

Some Obama fans seem to have taken the void left by religion - the need for a source of meaning and inspiration - and filled it with politics.

In doing so, they demean both the religious and the political and, in a twist of irony, become implicated in a religious approach to politics which we on the left reject from the religious right.

A Darker Shade of White

There's nothing really fresh about Obama except his darker shade of white. Obama is part of the liberal elite.

Harvard Law, followed by pseudo ethnic community organizer, followed by a stint in the Illinois assembly, followed by a job in the senate.

He is a liberal party hack to the core. He bugs the Clintonistas for what amounts to dynastic reasons.

He does not unnerve the Democratic party, because he is a better party man than Bill or Hillary.

The Democrats who are worried are expressing concern out of loyalty to Bill.

Some are worried that Obama might repudiate the move to the right that Clinton carried out. Personally I think Obama will stay in the centre for the good of the party.

As for the cult of personality, I mean, Bush was an untouchable wise leader in 2002 and into 2003. The cult thing will wear off.

The 'prize' in this election is to become the first ever American President empowered to become a totalitarian dictator in America and everywhere else on the globe that America has the power ascendancy. A 'religious' leader if you like, in the mould of Hitler or Stalin.

The ultra-rich behind the throne of course don't care who gets it, as long as they have the power of the office in their hands; any figurehead will do.

Whatever lets the people feel better about the meaningless process.

A Wake-Up Call for Hillary [Maureen Dowd]

Channeling her inner Cheney, Hillary Clinton dropped a fear bomb, as Michelle Obama might call it, implying in a new ad that if her opponent is elected, your angelic, innocent, sleeping children could die in a terrorist attack.

Only she has the wise head to go nuclear, should that Strangelovian phone call from a power-mad Putin come into the White House at 3 a.m. Her ad shows how composed she would be at the dread moment when she picks up the phone. Her nuke look is feminine, in a tailored camel-colored jacket and gold necklace, yet serious, in Tina Fey black reading glasses.

It’s hard to discern the message of the ad. The scariest thing is not the persistently ringing phone but an Andrea Yates-looking mother who’s creeping up on the sleeping babes in the dark. The point can’t be that Hillary is superior to Obama in international crisis management, because she’s done no more of it than he has. She’s only done domestic crisis management, cleaning up after Frisky Bill.

Is the message that Hillary is Ready on Night One? That she won’t have to waste any time if she’s rousted out of bed in the wee hours, because she’s wearing a pantsuit under her pantsuit? (Or is it just, as Wesley Clark said during an appearance with her in Waco on Friday, that Hillary’s “been in the White House when the tough decisions were made. I guess you’ve been at the bedside when that phone rang at 3 a.m.”)

It’s rather Mommie Dearest for the first serious female contender to try to give the kiddies nightmares. How maternal is that? But since her nightmare is losing, she doesn’t mind scaring the pj’s off of little Jimmy and Johnny.

Obambi-No-More briskly dismissed Hillary’s attempt to cast him as a global ingénue. “Senator Clinton may not be aware, but we already had a red phone moment,” he said at an outdoor rally here, with the crowd of 8,000 booing at the mention of Hillary’s ad. “It was the decision to invade Iraq. Senator Clinton picked up the phone and gave the wrong answer. And John McCain picked up the phone and gave the wrong answer. And George Bush picked up the phone and gave the wrong answer.”

(In fact, there is no red phone in the Oval Office, but maybe Obama will redecorate. He wants to put in a hoops court.)

On “Nightline” last week, Hillary once more wallowed in gender inequities, asserting that it’s harder for her to run than her opponent — a black man with an exotic name that most Americans hadn’t even heard a year ago.

“Every so often I just wish that it were a little more of an even playing field,” she said, “but, you know, I play on whatever field is out there.”

Is that how she would deal with dictators, by playing the refs and going before the U.N. to demand: “How come you’re not asking Ahmadinejad these questions first?”

Tangled in her own victimhood, she snipped to Cynthia McFadden that Obama had written in his book that “he’s a blank screen and people of widely different views project what they want to believe onto him.” She said voters were projecting their hopes onto that blank screen even though “he just hasn’t been around long enough.”

In the next breath, asked about the women who feel sorry for her, she said: “I think a lot of women project their own feelings and their lives on to me, and they see how hard this is. It’s hard. It’s hard being a woman out there.”

So projection is bad with Obama but good with her?

On a conference call Friday with Hillary’s ever-more-hysterical male strategists, Slate’s John Dickerson asked exactly when she had been tested in a foreign policy crisis. After a silence long enough to knit a sweater in, as the Web site The Hotline put it, Mark Penn cited “her work on the Armed Services Committee.”

Hillary’s boys pout that the press should find some dirt on Obama before time runs out. Their once fearsome campaign is now reduced to whining that Obama did not hold any substantive hearings of his Subcommittee on European Affairs. What’s next? Bitterly complaining that he missed a quorum call?

Hillary keeps trying to dismiss Obama’s appeal as emotional, something that can be overcome with enough mental discipline. But behind that ethereal presence he’s a wonky lawyer, just like Hillary. He reads The Times and Philip Roth and talks about the fine points of Medicare Part B in a way W. never could have when he first ran for president. (Or now.)

Hillary’s visceral attacks will not work. And the Republicans’ visceral attacks on the Obamas’ patriotism, and their usual attempt to make the Democrat seem foreign (Hussein, Hussein, Hussein!), may not have the same traction.

The president took the country to war on his gut, exploited our fears and played the patriotism card to advance his political agenda.

This time, Americans may prefer cerebral arguments to visceral ones. What a refreshing change reality would be.

tags: dowd  obama  hillary clinton  mania  president  2008  

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