Charles Krauthammer rounds up a lot of thoughts on Obamamania then adds his own to the mix. The conclusion: Obama is running an amazingly fact-free campaign on a thin personal record with unsustainable promises. It's the genius of selling a free product.
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 worshipers," 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."
I've seen only one similar national swoon. As a teenager growing up in Canada, I witnessed a charismatic law professor go from obscurity to justice minister to prime minister, carried on a wave of what was called Trudeaumania.
Ouch. Krauthammer points out that many Democratic strategists are worried that Obama might not be able to sustain the religious fervor through the entire campaign. Krauthammer is concerned that he might. The wakeup call would be very hard in that case. It would also be swift as all those promises are revealed to be unreachable or extremely painful and costly.
I still think that Hilly the Hun will pull out the nomination – probably by getting the delegates from Florida and Michigan seated. But Obama is far stronger that I thought that he would be at this point.
I tend to agree with Krauthammer. We might very well awaken from the dream after the November election. But I would point to Jimmy Carter as a better example of Obama’s campaign rather than Trudeau. A predilection for empty sound bites, a meager record of accomplishment, a weak grasp of international politics, complete economic illiteracy, a refusal to be specific about the big ticket items being proposed, a condescending attitude towards opponents, an overwhelming sense of moral superiority, an obedient lapdog press set to obey his every command - those were hallmarks of the Carter campaign. They also fit Obama’s profile as well.
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