August 27th 2008
Obama: Just A God, Or More?
I
n securing the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama pulled off the political miracle of our lifetime. He beat the Clinton machine, covered up his radical roots with a false empty suit, ran away from this paltry record, and kept the rhetoric soaring enough to dazzle the special delegates and steal the nomination.
Most people get this, and realize that the man is not as grand as his image, that he’s a poll who just barely pulled off an unexpected win. That’s why most people are getting more and more turned off to Obama/messiah imagery, and it’s why Obama’s world tour hurt him in the polls – particularly the grandiose Berlin speech.
But people who realize this aren’t Obama, and they’re not Obama insiders. Barack, Michelle and the senior campaign staff appear blind to the criticism that Obama is playing too grand a hand, that he is acting too much like president and not enough like a candidate acting presidential.
They could pull back the imagery and rhetoric now that Hillary’s done with and the nomination is in hand. But they don’t get it. They don’t see it. In fact, they’re so oblivious to the public’s negative reaction to their “The One”-engendering imagery that they’re out to trump it tomorrow night when BO speaks to the multitudes again. Reuters reports that we need to batten the hatches; another flood of Obama the One symbolism is headed our way:
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s big speech on Thursday night will be delivered from an elaborate columned stage resembling a miniature Greek temple. …
Some 80,000 supporters will see Obama appear from between plywood columns painted off-white, reminiscent of Washington’s Capitol building or even the White House, to accept the party’s nomination for president.
He will stride out to a raised platform to a podium that can be raised from beneath the floor.
The show should provide a striking image for the millions of Americans watching on television as Obama delivers a speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination.
Yes, it sounds like it certainly will provide a striking image. We can spend the speech wondering if Obama things (a) he is a god, (b) his is already president or (c) all of the above.
His campaign has seen how effectively the McCain camp has been able to repackage Obama’s own grandstanding to hurt him. They’ve seen how the Berlin imagery, packaged with Paris and Brittney, singlehandedly stopped their juggernaut in its tracks. But they are so caught up in the Grand Mystique that they simply can’t dial it back, they can’t reinvent their candidate as someone more human.
So tomorrow night the McCain campaign should get a free truckload of new visuals it can show to raise even more doubts about this strange Dem concoction of a candidate, allowing them to launch a new ridiculing ad just as McCain announces his VP choice, thereby minimizing any convention bounce for Obama.
If you ever needed a case study in why vanity is a sin, you’re looking at it.
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August 27th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
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