Hail to the Chief
By Here’s Trekkie Clausewitz, fitting the Powerliners for a pearl necklace:
Obama sees and describes himself as an astonishment to the world: the audacity of hope; an agent of change; the total transformation of the world; a blissful warrior against arrogance. He speaks in a messianic preacher-voice, because he sees himself as the Minister of the New (liberal fascist) World Order.
Which is of course totally not the way “the great bloggers of our time” have ever spoken of anyone:
I had the opportunity this afternoon to be part of a relatively small group who heard President Bush talk, extemporaneously, for around forty minutes. It was an absolutely riveting experience. It was the best I’ve ever seen him. Not only that; it may have been the best I’ve ever seen any politician. If I summarized what he said, it would all sound familiar: the difficult times we live in; the threat from Islamic fascism–the phrase drew an enthusiastic round of applause–the universal yearning for freedom; the need to confront evil now, with all the tools at our disposal, so that our children and grandchildren can live in a better and safer world. As he often does, the President structured his comments loosely around a tour of the Oval Office. But the digressions and interpolations were priceless.
The conventional wisdom is that Bush is not a very good speaker. But up close, he is a great communicator, in a way that, in my opinion, Ronald Reagan was not. He was by turns instructive, persuasive, and funny. His persona is very much that of the big brother. Above all, he was impassioned. I have never seen a politician speak so evidently from the heart, about big issues–freedom, most of all . . . .
It was, in short, the most inspiring forty minutes I’ve experienced in politics.
. . . I was in the middle of a faculty senate meeting when I posted this, so I was a little more abbreviated than I’d have liked. I should have added that it’s this sort of thing that’s going to make life incredibly easy if and when Obama secures the nomination. Wingnut bloggers who yodel about “teh messiah” are going to have to scrub years worth of archival wanking if they want lefty blogging to be anything more difficult than paint-by-numbers.