An interesting, and often unintentionally humorous, sidebar to the 2008 presidential campaign is how the punditocracy and other so-called opinion shapers attempt to define and explain the phenomenom known as Sen. Barack Obama. At first, his entry into the race was seen as, at best, quixotic giving the inevitabilty of Hillary Clinton's Democratic presidential nomination. Then after Obama demonstrated that he was indeed a formidable challenger, former President Clinton and others tried to play him off and thus marginalize him as the "black candidate" not unlike Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Obama's repeated success in states with small black populations has just about burst that bubble. Now comes the New York Times and what it terms The Charisma Mandate. Essentially, Obama's appeal is viewed as a cult of personality - Rev. Jim Jones without the Kool-Aid. The most feverish utterances are those of Sean Wilentz, who is identified as a Princeton historian and longtime Clinton family friend. "What is troubling about the campaign is that it's gone beyond hope and change to redemption. It's posing as a figure who is one person who will redeem our politics and what I fear is, that ends up promising more from politics can deliver."
A "God save the Republic" is order at this point.
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