Oh, and Jonathan Chait points out that the so-called "cult" of Obama is no more culty than the cults of Bush and Reagan that conservatives subscribe to, so all you conservatives bleating about Obama's messianism can shut up already. That won't stop me making fun of it, of course, but it's an excellent point. Win:
Next, there is Obama's declaration that "we are the ones we've been waiting for." The point, which he has made many times, is that voters should take responsibility themselves for enacting change, and thus that his supporters should not treat him as a savior. Obama-as-cult-leader screeds insist upon reading the meaning as the exact reverse. Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote, "in the words of his own slogan, 'we are the ones we've been waiting for,' which, translating the royal 'we,' means: 'I am the one we've been waiting for.'" As a pundit, I'm intrigued by this technique of taking a word out of your subject's statement and substituting its opposite. Did you know that McCain's slogan, "Country first," could be translated via the Krauthammer method into "Country last"? Why does John McCain hate America?The point Chait makes is that it's so rare for Democrats to be so dedicated to a candidate that it kinda freaks Republicans out. I'm still wary of this much dedication to a person - to me, the dedication ought to be to the ideals, not to some guy - but politics is personality-driven and pretty much every successful politician has some sort of magnetism about their personality that engenders this sort of dedication. The question is this - will someone power-trip on the dedication that their supporters show, or will they use that dedication for good? And so we're back to the ideas and policy stances again, which is what we should be deciding on anyway.