The GOP Plan for an Obama Candidacy

Charles Krauthammer has a recent column in which he discusses what he sees as the disturbing nature of the "Cult of Obama." It is a meme against Obama that is recently gaining steam, but is based on nothing more than a fear of the "feel-good" candidate. Part of the rich irony of this meme, at least coming out of the GOP, is that it constructs Obama's emotional appeal around a religious messianism and, almost incredibly, paints such an appeal in a very negative light. This is the same GOP that makes no bones about a Huckabee candidacy, whose populist religious messianism is not only NOT constructed by Huckabee's opponents, but is actually embraced and promoted by Huckabee himself as the very strength of his appeal. Here's Krauthammer:

And now, in the most amazing trick of all, a silver-tongued freshman senator has found a way to sell hope. To get it, you need only give him your vote. Barack Obama is getting millions.

This kind of sale is hardly new. Organized religion has been offering a similar commodity -- salvation -- for millennia. Which is why the Obama campaign has the feel of a religious revival with, as writer James Wolcott observed, a "salvational fervor" and "idealistic zeal divorced from any particular policy or cause and chariot-driven by pure euphoria."

"We are the hope of the future," sayeth Obama. We can "remake this world as it should be." Believe in me and I shall redeem not just you but your country -- nay, we can become "a hymn that will heal this nation, repair this world, and make this time different than all the rest."

But this meme is as empty of substance as it claims Obama of being. It rests on an assumption that any candidate who taps into emotion must not have much of policy substance about him. Again, here's Krauthammer on the point:

I've seen only one similar national swoon. As a teenager growing up in Canada, I witnessed a charismatic law professor go from obscurity to justice minister to prime minister, carried on a wave of what was called Trudeaumania.

But even there the object of his countrymen's unrestrained affections was no blank slate. Pierre Trudeau was already a serious intellectual who had written and thought and lectured long about the nature and future of his country.

Obama has an astonishingly empty paper trail. He's going around issuing promissory notes on the future that he can't possibly redeem. [Emphasis Added.]

I, like Andrew Sullivan, find this a baffling and completely unsubstantiated charge. Think about it on a number of levels: (1) What other candidate, even before being catapulted into the national limelight or any political office, had published an autobiography that opened a window to his life that almost no other politician offers at the beginning of his political career? (2) He has a political career as an elected official in State and National politics that spans more than 10 years. (3) He has organizational and grass-roots credibility that shames many other well-heeled and long-standing Washington insider candidates. So there's undoubtedly a "paper trail" of policy positions and votes and legislative initiatives and personal experience to review and debate.

What I think Krauthammer and other Obama critics mean when they make such arguments is that Obama has a "paper trail" that is empty of scandal, hidden secrets, and policy positions that are assailable. In other words, he's an already-exposed candidate with a "clean" and forthright record that is eminently transparent to all who take the time to look. But, Krauthammer is a neocon after all, so what can one expect from him? After all, he's just part of a GOP machine that will try to make this the defining theme of difference between the long career and extensive "paper trail" of McCain (though, interestingly, the McCain "paper trail" should and does rub conservatives the wrong way). So, no matter that Krauthammer is playing fast and loose with the truth in an attempt to spin the political discourse in favor of the GOP. But what gives Krauthammer and his conservative ilk currency is not that they are spouting such drivel that's as empty as the imagined "cult of Obama" they lament, but that they can refer to Clintonista liberals such as Paul Krugman (or anti-establishment establishment "progressives" like NOLA's very own Jeffrey) for backup.

The intellectual dishonesty here among the Krauthammers, the Krugmans, and, yes, the Jeffreys of this campaign season is that they intentionally obfuscate or ignore Obama's "paper trail," which is pentiful, wonkish, AND the most progressive, with a visceral and irrational reaction against Obama's "inspirational" qualities.

It's turning into a cult itself, I'd say. The cult of Obamaphiliaphobia.