I really do like seeing Barack Obama running this country. But that just may be the problem. The difference between believing him to be "the best equipped person in generations to be President" or some kind of political Messiah, etc, doesn't seem, to me, to be statistically significant. Both positions idealize him to an unrealistic extent.
Being a successful career politician, as Obama has decided to become, requires skills that few non-politicians can really relate to. They have to constantly hone what "doesn't work" into what "does work" as far as connecting with their chosen base of potential political supporters. A particularly intelligent, talented and ambitious politician will be able to hone "what doesn't work" into an image that his potential supporters find to be very appealing. Someone with Obama's proven political genius, can approach Messianic proportions as far as his image goes.
But so did Hitler.
"They will not see how you are, just how you seem" wrote Machiavelli.
Image and reality are not as easily distinguished by the average voter as they would like to believe, and very often not even by the most astute political analyst. This doesn't mean Obama won't be an effective President. Lyndon Johnson is generally considered to be the most corrupt President in American history. But he gave us the War on Poverty, the Civil Rights Act, and the Great Society Program. Personally, I believe we are far beyond requiring mere "effectiveness". I believe this is true not just with regard to our economy, but to our values and entire culture, in any meaningful sense of the words. Because both of which have virtually evaporated due to the superimposition by the business class, onto the rest of us, of a worship of technology over human progress, information over meaning, entertainment over art, material success over character, and recreational sex over love and respect.
Anyone who, as Obama has, for example, still views education as primarily a means to become "economically competitive in a global economy" just doesn't get it and probably never will, despite his apparently "profound humanisitic view of the world."
Jimmy Carter once said bluntly and, for me, quite to the point: Politics is image.
I still believe that Obama's erstwhile colleague, Adolph Reed, Jr., has the most intelligent grasp of the disparity between Obama's image and reality I have yet to come across. Obama No | The Progressive But even that single perspective can only scratch the surface.
If Obama delivers on everything he has promised, the ship will still go down: economy, values, culture and all. This is because he simply wants more to win, than to serve, and this country is beyond the point of being able to accomodate that division of purpose. "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon." Matthew 6:24
Success in American politics is still "mammon", and nothing Obama will do, and certainly no matter how he seems, will change that.
