Obama Through the Looking Glass
It appears Hillary is done for at the hands of the beamish boy.“One two, one two and through and through…” Spouting bromides that make less sense than Lewis Carroll’s famous nonsense poem, Jabberwocky, Obama has galumphed through the primaries, and to all appearances, has slain the Jabberwock, which “with eyes of flame, came whiffling through the tilgey wood, and burbled as it came.”
We are not sure which candidate has burbled more. But it would take a miracle, or considerable Clinton conniving, to change the outcome at this point. Obama is virtually certain to be the candidate. (O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! He chortled in his joy.) By virtue of his charm and saying nothing, he has wooed and won an unconscious electorate.
Obama is the 2008 version of pet rocks, but a lot scarier. Cults of personality have a frightening history. Any candidate that takes on the aura of a savior, but is not the Savior, is by definition a counterfeit. The mindless love it. The minded object … and suspect. Charles Krauthammer nails the candidate to his ephemeral wall:
“We are the hope of the future,” sayeth Obama. We can “remake this world as it should be.” Believe in me and I shall redeem not just you but your country — nay, we can become “a hymn that will heal this nation, repair this world, and make this time different than all the rest.”
And believe they do. After eight straight victories — and two more (Hawaii and Wisconsin) almost certain to follow — Obama is near to rendering moot all the post-Super Tuesday fretting about a deadlocked convention with unelected superdelegates deciding the nominee. Unless Hillary Clinton can somehow do in Ohio and Texas on March 4 what Rudy Giuliani proved is almost impossible to do — maintain a big-state firewall after an unrelenting string of smaller defeats — the superdelegates will flock to Obama. Hope will have carried the day.
Interestingly, Obama has been able to win these electoral victories and dazzle crowds in one new jurisdiction after another, even as his mesmeric power has begun to arouse skepticism and misgivings among the mainstream media.
ABC’s Jake Tapper notes the “Helter-Skelter cultish qualities” of “Obama worshippers,” what Joel Stein of the Los Angeles Times calls “the Cult of Obama.” Obama’s Super Tuesday victory speech was a classic of the genre. Its effect was electric, eliciting a rhythmic fervor in the audience — to such rhetorical nonsense as “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. (Cheers, applause.) We are the change that we seek.”
That was too much for Time’s Joe Klein. “There was something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism … ,” he wrote. “The message is becoming dangerously self-referential. The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is.”
You might dismiss The New York Times’ Paul Krugman’s complaint that “the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality” as hyperbole. Until you hear Chris Matthews, who no longer has the excuse of youth, react to Obama’s Potomac primary victory speech with “My, I felt this thrill going up my leg.” When his MSNBC co-hosts tried to bail him out, he refused to recant. Not surprising for an acolyte who said that Obama “comes along, and he seems to have the answers. This is the New Testament.”
When Chris Matthews makes such ecstatic, silly remarks, you know the Beamish Boy has a gimmick going. New Testament or not, it is a cult of personality suggesting the worst of the Twentieth Century. You can reel off the names: Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Castro, Tito, Evita, Ceaucescu, Jim Jones… All of them were hailed as saviors who would bring vague “change.” But what they were selling was snake oil, not worth two bits but costing infinitely more.
Obama seems to have the answers, but what are they? We need to know far more about him, not just whether he can charm our socks off. Not just whether he makes us feel good, or makes “thrills run up” our collective leg. None of that pays the rent or keeps Osama in his Afghan cave.
Who is Barrack Hussein Obama, and where was his character forged? There is much available online, and a lot that his campaign has papered over. More to come.
8 comments
What more would we really expect from Chris Matthews? This silly response of his to Obama’s message is consistent with his frivolous, far-left mind. As Ann Coulter said, or should have if she didn’t, if Democrats had any brains, they’d be Republicans. So give him a break, he was just doing his thing.
If only Republicans had a viable answer. They don’t. McCain nauseates me, too.
too true. Very nicely written. I heard Obama the other night responding to Clinton’s (surpisingly legitimate) complaint that we don’t know enough about Obama’s positions, opinions and plans–we have no specifics. Obama’s response was that Clinton is cynical. That was it. She’s cynical. Not “here are some specifics” but she (and he also referred to our culture as a whole) is too cynical. And the crowd went wild. Seriously.
Well, it may cost the Republicans an election or two, but, as a real conservative, I certainly cannot support Obama, McCain, (nor Hillary, if it comes to that). I will be “wasting” my vote in November on a third-party presidential candidate. There is no point in helping McCain continue the destruction of the Republican party, by electing him President.
If Osama wins, perhaps that Mayan Calendar was right after all!
Since all bad jokes have to be explained: The Mayan Calendar ends, with the end of this world, and the beginning of a new one, on December 21st, 22nd, or 23rd (there is some dispute on how it should be calculated) of the year 2012. That will be after the 2012 presidential election, but before the president we elect in 2008 leaves office.
When I see Obama’s connections, as we are beginning to –at long last– I am concluding I’ll take “an” answer, any answer. The result is that McCain is looking better to me, something I thought was impossible.
Masterfully done, Ms. Schulzke! Fantastic imagery!
I agree with Alison that there are no easy answers this time. I haven’t decided who I will vote for, but I’m not going to punch my ballot for Obama, unless I know a lot more about him than do right now and it’s all good.
Dave, “Osama”?
What an interesting fruedian slip. 
I’m willing to hope that only four years are between us and the Second Coming.
Well-written! Too bad it’s all true! I wish life could go back to the good old days when I didn’t know as much about politics as I do now. Or maybe I knew as much, but there wasn’t so much bad stuff to know. The frustration of feeling so powerless hurts. I love my country and it’s going to the dogs and it seems like all good people know it but no one can do anything about it. I know that’s not a well-constructed sentence, but my brain isn’t feeling well-constructed right now. Somebody DO something!!! The idiots are taking over!!!
Your commentary on Obama is on target. Lots of empty, electrifyingly delivered rhetoric, a charismatic personality, and not much more, have spawned primary victories and a cult of supporters ranging from political neophytes to otherwise savvy hedge fund operators who wear their Obama support on their sleeves as a badge of moral goodness and embarrassingly burble about how good they feel. The Obama campaign is all about sentiment. In “Try a Little Tenderness” Peggy Noonan decries the stump speeches’ utter lack of deep thought, which become glaringly apparent when you read instead of listen to them.
People believe into Obama’s warm, feel-good rhetoric and sunny disposition whatever they want. What is scary is that behind the empty rhetoric and likeability, as far as can be divined, lie Nanny Statism, a distrust of American power, a refusal to acknowledge the global threat posed by resurgent Islamic ideology, and a great fondness for horribly flawed multilateral institutions such as the U.N.
A President Obama would diminish America’s freedom, security and prosperity.
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