Anytime the aspirations of Andrew Sullivan, George Will and Markos* all congeal around the same Ivy-league lawyer the rest of us have cause to pay attention.
Is a new day truly about to dawn in America?
Let's hope not.
No candidate reminds me more of the fraternity president now posing for posterity at the end of his shame-filled tenure. Put aside the unhappy circumstances that brought 43 to power and recall only that academic rigor, business acumen and personal courage played no part. Charm, we were told, 43 had in abundance. We all know now how that turned out.
America's newest uniter is hardly the first man of faith America has sanctified when lost in the desert. With his impressive intellect and limitless charms, the transformational candidate is a vast improvement over 43, towers over the opposition field, and compares very favorably with the professional actor Americans last turned to for a reliable happy ending.
The cyber-cypher and the 'the great communicator' share important attributes. For all the talk the jelly-bean President was, for most Americans, an empty page upon which they could inscribe their favorite scenes from Death Valley Days and Father Knows Best. Today a similar sense of despair grips the land and the search is on for a new narrative allowing Americans to star as themselves. The transformational candidate has done the great communicator one better; using a razer-sharp mind and smoky, mellifluous voice to offer Americans the empty canvas while saying even less.
My own personal anti-epiphany occurred while watching the 'sit-up and beg' segment of the candidate's visit to the Comedy Show months back. A regal flick of a digital finger had Jon Stewart licking the proffered hand. It was a frightening and edifying spectacle. And then there was this.
For the rest of the candidates, digital HDTV seems to have arrived six months too early. Cameras veer close in to examine four-hundred dollar hair-cuts, smear-merchant spear-carriers and other assorted warts. Informed debate is rendered impossible by vapid talking heads and partisan hacks shrieking in concord. Thinking caps happily tossed aside in the cacaphony, the committed remove all cause and occasion to rethink their choices.
Markos has at least changed his mind.*
If all this puts you off, just remember the election is a mere 11 months away.
(This diary was originally published before Markos withdrew his endorsement of the anointed one. Diary has been edited to reflect this change. Did my piece trigger a crisis of conscience? We can only pray.)