Cult Of Personality – Or Not, As The Case May Be.

I sell the things you need to be
I’m the smiling face on your t.v.
I’m the cult of personality
I exploit you still you love me

(Living Colour, Cult of Personality)

Mark Steyn is actually arguing the opposite of what many of us on the right see as Obama’s attempts to build a creepy cult of personality up around himself. Oh, Steyn has nothing good to say about the Hollywoodenheads that pledge to serve Obama, but he actually sees the latest attempts by Obama to intrude into the classroom and onto the television as desperation:

“Mr Obama,” wrote Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal, “has grown boring.” Amazing, but true. He’s a crashing bore, and he’s become one in nothing flat. His approval ratings have slumped – not just among Republicans, not just among independents, not just among seniors, who are after all first in line for the death panels. But they’ve fallen among young people – the starry-eyed members of the Hopeychangey Generation who stared into the mesmerizing giant “O” of his logo and saw the new Otopia. According to the latest Zogby poll, Obama’s hold on the young is a wash: 41 per cent approve, 41 per cent disapprove. Zogby defines “young” as under 30, so maybe the kindergartners corralled into his audience this week will still be on side, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

The President’s strategy on Jan. 20 was to hurl all the vast transformative spaghetti at the wall – stimulus, auto nationalization, cap’n'trade, health care – and make it stick through the sheer charisma of his personality. Unfortunately, the American people aren’t finding it quite so charismatic, and they’re beginning to spot the yawning gulf between the post-partisan hopeychangey rhetoric and the budget-busting, prosperity-throttling, future-beggaring big government policies.

No wonder the poor chap’s running out of material. At the time of writing, one of his exercises for America’s schoolchildren is to suggest what you’d like him to do in his next speech. Here’s mine: Call in sick, sir. You’ll be doing your presidency a favor.

Do read the whole thing, there’s a wonderful slam on The New York Times and its complete inability to tell the truth about that Canadian author. They quote Steyn completely out of context. He said the exact opposite of what the Times reports.

Maybe Steyn is correct, the one is running out of material, running out of steam and running out of political luck – all at the same time. The White House does appear to be flailing. They continue to employ a self-described communist as of this morning (dang it, I didn’t win the pool) but they seem unable to come up with anything more for Obama to do than go on TV! One more speech will do the trick, sir. Honest!

Go. Read. You’ll enjoy it.