Democrats, it seems, have a readied answer if Obama loses the election. In a flurry of articles in the MSM, paper and print, the pundits tell us the loss will be the result of racism. Period—forget the issues; forget the traditional divisions that make an American identify with one party over another. As the panting protests continue, their hyperventilation reveals another implication: Obama deserves the Presidency because of his color alone. Should Americans not elect Obama, we somehow refute the promise America has always stood for—that shining city on a hill—and instead demonstrate the ugly truth that for the last one hundred and fifty years, so far as minorities are concerned and particularly people of color, we remain a bigoted lot. The irony, of course, with this assertion, is that the bigotry is a scarlet letter they alone must wear. Republican numbers are plainly reflected in all the poles. The prejudice—if it be that; there are other explanations—will be that of the Democrats—a curse upon their own house— and that of undecided voters.
Nearly in the same apocalyptic breath, these pundits speculate on the consequences of such a loss. Surprisingly, the consequences have little to do with the politics of a Republican Administration and the implied continued misdirection of the country under the command of McCain-Palin. In fact, they don’t much bemoan the loss of a Democratic Administration. They don’t worry over the fiscal consequences should Obama lose, the health care crisis, and so on—perhaps because they know their power in congress is likely to remain entrenched. Instead, they emphasize the loss of Obama, the man, the individual. This is particularly interesting because this has been, essentially, the Obama campaign strategy itself, a campaign based, more than anything else, on the persona of Obama.
I am speaking of Obama, The One.
With this kind of reverence it seems natural that the pundits and true believers view the day after the election, should Obama lose, in eschatological terms—the holy cause for which they have given their every hope will have been defeated. On that day, we are told, there will be race riots or another civil war. Cities will erupt in flames, violence, and death as the lone Laocoon shouts from the hill tops “Can’t we all just get along?” And as if this violence is not enough, they warn that without an Obama Presidency, world opinion of America, already low, will plummet to irretrievable lows—in short, that somehow, someway, America—the United States of America—will become illegitimate among nations and dissolve to a state where it will be irrelevant and impotent on the world stage except as b*stard irritant.
In sum, the Obamaites have transformed the campaign into a holy cause, which, being holy, has no alternatives. To reject or question Obama is heresy—not a difference of opinion—or at least,
lese majeste. Still, we all know the chapter and verse of the Obama Bible: “generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow” and the prophetic proclamations, “we are the ones we have been waiting for,” and, most recently Obama’s belief that he has “righteous wind” at his back. Put another way the Democrats have not pursued a political campaign, but instead created
a mass movement. Obama’s quasi-messianic rhetoric, in addition his tendency towards the theatrical—e.g. his speech in Germany, originally planned with the Brandenburg gate as a backdrop; delivering his nomination acceptance speech in a stadium, on the same day as Martin Luther King’s famous I Have A Dream speech, on a stage meant to evoke some classical setting, perhaps the temple of a Greek oracle, as well as his tendency to reference himself to or model himself after other leaders (Lincoln, Kennedy, and King, in particular) follows the prototype of mass movement leaders. Such leaders and movements were first and perhaps best observed by Eric Hoffer in his famous book on the subject entitled
The True Believer. In the book, Hoffer observes that leaders of mass movements have certain traits or talents in common, including, a conviction that “[the leader] is in possession of the one and only truth and [demonstrates] a delight in symbols (spectacles and ceremonials).” Hoffer continues on the talents of a mass movement leader:
The leader has to be practical and a realist yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist…Perhaps the clue to any heroic career is an unbounded capacity for imitation; a single minded fashioning after a model. This excessive capacity for imitation indicates that the hero is without a fully developed and realized self. There is much in him that is rudimentary and suppressed. His strength lies in his blind spots and in plugging all outlets but one.
If this doesn’t capture Obama—who even his most ardent admirers admit that his failure to “close the deal” is the result—after two memoirs, no less—of Americans not knowing who he is as a man, it comes strikingly close. Knowing this, what has Obama done? At various times and places, he has done precisely what Hoffer suggests above—imitated Kennedy, Lincoln and King—in favor of defining himself while “plugging” or doing his best to “plug” including legal means and mob roguery and expulsion, to quiet any dissent or inquiry into his person or past history.
This leads me back to the legacies of this historic campaign. There are many of course and most depend on who wins and who loses. But, regardless of party affiliation, America, as a nation, is either entering or in the midst of its own Thermidorian reaction. I think few would argue this point. This begs the question what—or who—will follow?