Down the street from my office a hip tavern-owner has hung
three ginormous portraits of Barack Obama gazing watchfully down
Kingshighway. The Warholesque likenesses are eerily reminiscent
not so much of campaign billboards, but of the giant portraits of
Mao and Stalin that were once fixtures in communist
nations.
If the Obama campaign reminds you too of a mass movement of
true believers I suspect it is because the candidate himself has
encouraged this perception. Early in the campaign the Hopemeister
heralded his arrival with this verbal trumpet blast: “We are the
ones we’ve been waiting for!” Since then the terms most
frequently associated with Obama and his supporters include
“cultish,” “messianic,” “rock star,” “Kool-aid drinkers” and
various combinations of the words Obama and robot. One wonders if
the Democratic nominee hasn’t studied the works of Eric Hoffer
and Hannah Arendt to learn what it takes to lead a successful
mass movement of true believers.
Our mainstream media has been justly parodied for its
blatant love-affair with Obama, most famously on Saturday
Night Live. But who can forget MSNBC’s Chris Matthews’
unintentionally humorous gushing about the “thrill”
running up his leg when Obama delivered his acceptance speech
after a primary election? And, again, when Tweety (as he’s known
in the blogosphere) told the New York Observer, “I’ve
been following politics since I was about 5. I’ve never seen
anything like this. This is bigger than Kennedy. [Obama] comes
along, and he seems to have the answers. This is the New
Testament.” Even two of our most erudite and cynical political
observers, Christopher Buckley and Christopher Hitchens, have
been unable to resist Obama’s siren call.
Hillary Clinton, who had more mature, if less exuberant
followers, was early perplexed by the euphoria surrounding Obama.
Last February the Clinton campaign sought to capitalize on the
curious behavior of Barack’s backers and the weird vibes they
were sending by attempting to portray Obama as an empty suit who
appealed to the emotions, while Clinton was for those who had a
brain, and couldn’t be swayed by empty slogans. It didn’t
work.
Even some Barack supporters admit to being “weirded out” by
Obama’s followers, particularly the way they refer to their
leader in almost reverent terms, the way they rush the stage when
he speaks reminiscent of the Beatles at Shea Stadium. For a while
there was a rash of fans fainting at Obama rallies, whereupon
comedian Larry David quipped, “Sinatra had the same effect on
people.” Time’s Joe Klein admitted “[there is] something
just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism…of (Obama’s)
Super Tuesday speech and the recent turn of the Obama campaign.”
And Joel Stein suggested cause for concern in the Los Angeles
Times. “Obamaphilia has gotten creepy. I couldn’t figure out
if the two canvassers who came to my door Sunday had taken
Ecstasy or were just fantasizing about an Obama presidency, but I
feared they were going to hug me.”
Commenting on the “Helter-Skelter cult-ish qualities” of
Obama’s followers, ABC News’ Senior National Correspondent Jack
Tapper wrote: “Inspiration is nice. But some folks seem to be
getting out of hand.” Kathleen Geier worried that “this sounds
more like a cult than a political campaign. The language used
here is the language of evangelical Christianity — the Obama
volunteers speak of ‘coming to Obama’ in the same way born-again
Christians talk about ‘coming to Jesus.’…So I say, we should
all get a grip, stop all this unseemly mooning over Barack, see
him and the political landscape he is a part of in a cooler,
clearer, and more realistic light…”
Even James Wolcott of Vanity Fair found himself
“increasingly wary of and resistant to the salvational fervor of
the Obama campaign, the idealistic zeal divorced from any
particular policy or cause and chariot-driven by pure euphoria.”
But the award for sheer creepiness has to go to a Pyongyangesque
video of a group of young children forced to sing a lame bit of
doggerel called “Sing for Change.” (The Pyongyang mix is
available here.)
IN HIS BOOK THE TRUE BELIEVER Eric Hoffer suggested two
necessary conditions must be present for a mass movement to
flourish: the believer must be frustrated and have faith
in some irresistible power. (Hoffer noted the Jacobins believed
in the irresistible power of Reason, the communists in Marxist
doctrine, and the Nazis in their Führer and his race
master race theories.) However to succeed, this power must be
joined with a faith in the future. “For the hopeful can draw
strength from the most ridiculous sources of power — a slogan, a
word, a button.” But fanning discontent can only take one so far.
If the true believers are to win, Hoffer said, it will be because
they know how to preach hope. Preaching hope pretty well sums up
the Obama campaign.
Hoffer’s ideas may seem at first blush to perfectly
describe Obama’s followers, but while they explain the lockstop
of their thinking, they do not adequately explain their ends. I
suspect these young hipsters genuinely want to change the world
in some vague, utopian, environmentally friendly way, and they
have deluded themselves into thinking that Obama’s big government
solutions will do the trick. They are in for a big letdown
following if their candidate wins, but that’s all part of the
maturation process.
