In the spirit of Hope ‘n Change’s first 100 days (it’s all about him, after all), I’m republishing this posting from November 19, 2008. Looking at the media preparations for a collective Messiah-gasm, it seems more appropriate than ever. And in the spirit of messianism, consider “The Truth” by Michael D’Antuono, being displayed in New York’s Union Square for the occasion:
I simply wanted you to be in a properly reverent mental posture. Enjoy the updated post.
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Think of the various jibes about Barack Obama: he’s the ‘Messiah’, ‘The One’ or the ‘Dear Leader’. His rallies have always had a touch of grandiosity (think of the Berlin speech) and have usually been short on substance (‘we are the people we’ve been waiting for’).
Even leftist commentators like Paul Krugman and Evan Thomas have noted Obama’s apparent Cult of Personality, which as a political style has been around since at least the time of the Assyrian kings. The leader unites with his adherents by the aura of his own charisma, which was historically viewed as a supernatural force that bypasses both reason and experience.
But because Obama is both charismatic and publicly vague does not mean that he is harmless. When we think of the mania surrounding Barack Obama and what he might do with it once inaugurated, it’s instructive to remember Pierre Elliot Trudeau.
Remember him? He was Canadian prime minister from 1968 to 1979 and 1980 to 1984. In those days it was called “Trudeaumania” and the man helped transform Canada from a sober, rather dull Scots-French cultural ethos to the supercharged political correctness of today. Last March, Lionel Chetwynd in the Weekly Standard wrote about Trudeau’s appeal in those days and his non-specific attraction:
As a candidate in 1968, Trudeau was completely nonspecific, avoiding policy questions and depending entirely on style and panache. This would surely undo him, or so we reassured ourselves, those of us who believed him to be a hard-line leftist because we’d read his essays in Cité Libre and studied his academic writings at the University of Montreal. We were wrong: His lack of specificity was his strength. A brilliant and smiling Savile Row-suited orator, he spun webs around huge crowds, proposing big ideas in obscure terms, leaving listeners to discover in his speeches their own dreams. He was all things to all people. And out of party loyalty and civility, we held our tongues.
But elected he was and Trudeau went to work on the social fabric itself with the uncritical cooperation of Canada’s younger generation:
Before Trudeau, Canada still basked in the glory of its own Greatest Generation. Canada had raised the largest army in the world, per capita, to fight Hitler (1.4 million from a population of 11 million). Emerging from World War II as a leading industrial power, it had devoted a vast part of its treasure to financing the Colombo Plan, “the Marshall Plan of Asia.” Parts of the infrastructure used to this day in Pakistan, India, and South Asia were paid for by Canadians. Those same Canadians generally viewed the United States with affection, even admiration. True, many harbored a residual anger at America’s more than two-year delay in entering World War II, but that was a family squabble, easily put aside. They had no laws barring or limiting the flow of American popular culture across the border. That Canada’s moment of triumph came in the summer of 1967 with the hugely successful Montreal world’s fair known as Expo ‘67.
All this changed when Trudeau became prime minister, overwhelming more experienced candidates for the party leadership with his amazing style. Once in power, he led Canada down a radical new path, muddying what had been a clear sense of identity, deemphasizing the country’s Scottish-French roots in favor of a more ambiguous European model. The new Canadian identity–ardently embraced in the early Trudeau years–was equivocal. It stressed multiculturalism rather than biculturalism, extolled diversity and “international consensus,” and cast the very existence of the United States as sinister while rushing to recognize Communist China and Cuba. This revolution would remake Canada into something its prewar self would hardly recognize. A people once proud of their history would be weaned away from it and remade into a relativistic, postmodern nation.
Read it all.
Trudeau deliberately cultivated his image as pop-star politician. Consider this photo, circa 1968. Note the crowd – all young and largely female – and the feverish expressions. Compare and contrast with the faces in this video montage about Obama, set to Marilyn Manson’s ‘Personal Jesus’:
But Trudeau’s politics were all to the left – and the early indications are that Obama’s are headed in the same direction.
