The Deification Of Political Figures

     I’d been musing over the remarkable tendency of otherwise sensible Americans to imbue politicians with powers beyond those of us mortals when I stumbled into this video:

     Watch it, both for the example of political deification it provides and for the risibility it elicits from Ott, Green, and Whittle. The former will probably amuse many of my Gentle Readers just as it amused the worthies of Trifecta.

     I’m here to argue that your reaction should be quite the reverse.

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     Not many persons will remember the details of the 1992 presidential campaign, apart from the infamous Gennifer Flowers affair and Bill Clinton’s problem with “bimbo eruptions.” Those tidbits were entertaining – given what happened during his tenure in the White House, we certainly should have paid more attention to them – but they struck me as far less important than something I noticed during the campaign.

     The presidency of Bush the Elder had left a substantial number of Americans, including many fairly called “Reagan Democrats,” wondering about Bush’s tendency to renege on his commitments and promises. That alone might have been enough to give Clinton the electoral edge. What went largely unnoticed was the Left’s tendency to elevate Clinton above the common ruck of Mankind. The paeans to his intellect were unceasing. Despite his paunch, women thought him especially attractive. And who could forget his expressiveness at the lectern? His “I feel your pain” mantra, his many masks of contemplation, compassion, and regret, and his unmatched earnestness went well beyond what George H. W. Bush could pull out of his toolkit. The poor WASP from Kennebunkport was simply outmatched in any contest over pathos.

     But there was still more. Clinton’s weird parasexual appeal, mated to his relative youth for a presidential aspirant, seemed to inspire his allegiants to a quasi-religious devotion to his campaign. I recall distinctly hearing Judy Collins conducting a small choir as it sang “Bill will lead us to the promised land” to the tune of “Michael row the boat ashore,” during a news report on WCBS-AM about the Clinton campaign. While we didn’t hear about women in the audience fainting rapturously during his stump speeches as we did with Obama, there was no denying the readiness of his supporters to attribute superhuman qualities to him.

     Bill Clinton’s tenure in the Oval Office was saved from being the utter disaster it might have been by the 1994 Republican takeover of both Houses of Congress. That unexpected turn of events kept Clintonian statism, deeply established in both Bill and Hillary, from running rampant over the nation. Whatever those who backed him on Election Day believed about his prowess, there were enough voters, suitably distributed, to check his vanity and the open power-lust of his wife. Indeed, the effectiveness of the Republican Congresses he had to endure was his greatest asset. They might even be ultimately responsible for his re-election.

     That Clinton’s supporters raised him to demigod status is even more apparent in retrospect than it was during his rise. Consider how much her ever more tenuous association with him has done for Hillary’s presidential prospects. Were she any other former First Lady, she’d never have been considered for the job.

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     At this point it should be clear to any moderately observant American that they who supported Barack Hussein Obama for the presidency, and who continue to defend his every word and deed today, regard him as superhuman, incapable of making a mistake. Given the wreckage his tenure has left strewn over America’s economy, society, and international standing, Obama’s time in the White House has been inarguably an objective disaster, from which the nation will recover slowly if at all. But a confirmed Obamite will have none of that. Their Man stands above all merely temporal standards. He is not to be judged by the likes of us petty groundlings obsessed with unemployment and underemployment, the decline of the dollar, the feminization and ongoing hollowing-out of the armed forces, the effectively open southern border, and the advance of Islamism and its inevitable concomitant, terrorism, across the entire globe. Did you not know that gods are not to be judged by mortal men?

     The consequences of Obama’s deification will not be known in full for some time, but we already know enough to be certain that the last line on his statement of account will be written in red. But that’s not the end of this story. The desire for a Godlike Leader figure has infected the Right. Millions of Americans to the right of center politically now hope for a conservative counterpoint to Obama, whom they expect to repair the rents in our national fabric by sheer force of will. That their attention currently focuses on outsider candidates such as Donald Trump and Ben Carson says only that they’ve despaired of finding such a figure inside the political class as it stands; it does not mitigate the hazards attached to the readiness to venerate, if not worship, the product of the Republican primary process.

     This is a tendency that has birthed many a dictator. It must be checked -- now, before it can fasten upon us an un-term-limited president who, in our current albatross's words, "believe[s] my own bullshit." Beware.