The Messiah-Complex Complex
The right's silly obsession with the Obama "cult."by Jonathan Chait
Post Date Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Of all the complaints made against Barack Obama, the one I least understand is that he's some kind of millennial cult leader. An ad for John McCain and endless conservative commentary have harped on the theme of what National Review editor Rich Lowry called Obama's "secular messianism." Conservatives have sternly lectured Obama's fans that he will not, in fact, deliver paradise if elected. I agree! But why is this a reason to vote against him? McCain isn't going to create heaven on earth, either. Obama, however, might deliver health care reform and a more moderate federal judiciary.
The image of Obama as a messianic figure rests upon an endlessly repeated litany of
bogus particulars. The first is that Obama's fans faint at his speeches. Again, I fail to appreciate the horrors of having a president whose rhetoric is so inspiring that it causes listeners to faint. In any case, Obama isn't actually that good a speaker. People faint at public gatherings all the time, especially when they're in a warm building for a long time without enough to drink. People faint at rallies for other candidates, too--Obama's fainters just started to get reported on after the cult idea arose.
The second factoid is that Oprah Winfrey called Obama "The One." What Winfrey actually said was, "I am here to tell you, Iowa, he is the one!" Inevitably, conservative critics capitalize the phrase ("The One") to create an impression of creepy messianism. In any case, when you are trying to persuade your audience that a particular candidate is the one they should vote for, there's nothing inherently cultlike about calling him "the one." Unless, of course, you consider campaign slogans like
"Nixon's the One" evidence of a personality cult.
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?Finally, there's Obama's line,
"This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." McCain's campaign, and conservative pundits like Mark Steyn and Krauthammer (again), have mocked this as a claim to divine powers. "Moses made the waters recede, but he had help," sneered right-wing columnist Irwin Stelzer. Call me a
literalist, but I think
Obama was referring to his plan to curtail global warming, which is causing sea levels to rise at a rate of approximately three millimeters a year, rather than boasting supernatural dominion over the elements.
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=74274e4e-fac5-40a6-bf8f-0d64e812d632 
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