I posted below what I labeled three parts of a four-part response to Doug Hagler’s comments on my post “The self-esteem presidency.” Those parts were, respectively, a post noting mistakes Sarah Palin has made, one listing positive things about Barack Obama, and one listing positive things about the overly- and unfairly-vilified Dick Cheney. Being all of the same kind, detail posts, they quite properly went together. There is, however, a broader response that I think needs to be offered. Doug kicked the conversation off not just with a challenge, but with an assertion:
See, my theory is that hero-worship is just part of politics, and my guess is that it is just as operative with Palin supporters as it is with Obama supporters.
I think the best that can be said of the first part of this statement, the general theory Doug propounded, is that to the extent that it’s true, it’s not meaningful. On the one hand, I don’t know that we can rule out all hero worship for any significant politician—heck, I can think of one or two people who could be accused of that with respect to John McCain, though not for anything he’s done in politics. (Come to think of it, though, that same qualifier could be applied to most of Barack Obama’s adoring fans.) On the other, however, and more significantly, large-scale hero worship for politicians is a very rare thing. Take John Kerry, for instance (I’m tempted to say, “Please!”): he certainly tried to create an heroic image for himself, but I don’t think even Democrats bought it on a visceral level. They staunchly supported him, but for ideological reasons—and for emotional reasons that had nothing to do with Sen. Kerry, on which more in a minute. Hero worship of Ol’ Long Face was simply not in evidence.
If you look at the major politicians out there, at recent presidents and presidential candidates, Sen. Kerry was in that respect the rule, not the exception. Granted, Sen. Kerry was at the uncharismatic end for a politician, and thus unusually unlikely to inspire adoration—but not even Bill Clinton, the most charismatic of a remarkably unappealing set of presidential contenders over the last quarter-century, never inspired anything remotely approaching true widespread hero worship, let alone anything one might think to call a cult of personality.
This past campaign was the exception. Under normal circumstances, Hillary Clinton would have run away with the Democratic nomination, because she came into the campaign generating far more passion than any non-incumbent Democratic presidential candidate of the preceding 45 years; in some cases, I think you could fairly call that hero worship, of a purely ideological sort. As it was, though, she got blown away by somebody who could also generate that ideological sort of hero worship, but who also had the charisma and political skills to create much more—and took full advantage of them, even amplifying them by using quasi-messianic language of himself in his speeches.
This, of course, created a hunger in the Republican base for a candidate of their own who could do the same—and when Sen. McCain found one to be his running mate, the base went through the roof. There were a couple things, however, which mitigated against the development of the same sort of personality cult around Gov. Palin that had developed around Sen. Obama. The first, of course, was the fact that the McCain campaign didn’t want any such thing to happen; indeed, once they realized just how big a tiger they’d gotten by the tail, their main concern the rest of the way appeared to be keeping Gov. Palin from upstaging Sen. McCain. I wouldn’t say the GOP candidate was actively trying to squash support for his running mate, but he and his staff were definitely working to prevent it from developing in ways that wouldn’t benefit him directly.
The second, on the evidence of her own writings and speeches since the campaign, appears to have been that Gov. Palin wasn’t interested in any such thing happening either. Not only did she not make any “elect me and everything will be wonderful” types of statements during the campaign, she hasn’t made any since, or indeed done anything close. She has not adopted a strategy of offering herself to the nation, and there seems to be no reason to think that will change. Nor has she tried to organize, or indeed offered any support to, the community of online communities that have developed around her; in fact, the only acknowledgements I can recall from her staff of sites like Conservatives4Palin and TeamSarah have been vaguely unflattering.
The upshot of all of this is that, while there are no doubt a lot of people out there who could be fairly accused of hero worship with regard to Gov. Palin, whose view of her is unreasonably positive, there’s none of the fawning over her that one gets over the President, even from her most prominent supporters. There are no clergy offering prayers to her, no celebrities making music videos offering prayers to her, no school districts teaching their students to sing worship songs about her, no “Palin Youth” to match the “Obama Youth”—none of that, nothing of the kind. And certainly there’s no other politician, now or in living memory, who’s ever gotten that sort of treatment. The Obama phenomenon (Obamanomenon?) is and remains sui generis—at least outside countries like North Korea that can compel it.
Now, I can understand Doug’s desire to argue otherwise, since I know the personality cult of the Obamessiah doesn’t make him any happier than it does me; I can understand why he would want to be able to argue that this is just par for the course in politics, not something of which the Left has become uniquely guilty. In the end, though, the facts just won’t sustain that argument; this is in fact something unique to the Left in American politics. I continue to believe that there’s good reason for that, that this is no accident but rather is the result of the secular Left’s search for a secular messiah to replace the one it has decisively rejected. For all the temptation to political idolatry on the Right (something I’ve certainly written about often enough), that particular temptation doesn’t exist there, as religious conservatives already have a Messiah and non-religious conservatives tend to be quite consciously anti-messianic. Here’s hoping that doesn’t change.
I've said before, and I'll say again, that hero worship seems to have risen to a new crescendo in my lifetime with Obama – but only because of some messianic overtones. I've heard far more absurd things said of Reagan, and that's after we have his legacy to look at in hindsight. In part, this is more deserved, because Reagan had his whole presidency to accomplish things. It is also less deserved because we are more able to look back at Reagan as a person, to humanize him, if only the political Right had the courage to do that.
The problem with what you're saying in this post is that you are conflating hero worship with religious messianism. They are not the same to me, and the conflation simply confuses the important issue, which is the religious messianism that a minority of the Left has aimed at Obama and that, at the very least, he has regrettably never made efforts to dissuade.
I don't think your argument that there is little or no hero worship of Palin holds up in the slightest. I don't think it's large-scale for her because the McCain campaign tamped her down and ultimately she didn't win. IF she does win a major election in the future, I'll be happy to point it out to you 🙂
What's problematic for me is the religious messianism. Hero worship is aimed at athletes and pop singers and celebrities of all kinds. I worry about religious messianism aimed at a political figure, however. I'm glad Obama is a Democrat, so that he is supported by a catastrophically incompetent and ineffectual party and will end up, in all likelihood, just disappointing on a large scale. But still, that's what's worrisome, not the hero worship that comes with something Americans love – celebrity.
It would be interesting to look at the intersection of politics and celebrity (ex: Bob Dole failed as a presidential candidate but then surged as a celebrity for a while – intriguing to me)
I don't know what it is about Obama, it is a very strange thing. I see a lot of excitement about Sarah Palin, which a minority carry to extremes, but with Obama the press is involved, which is NEVER a good thing. (If the press likes you and you didn't land a plane on water, you need to do some serious soul searching LOL)
A part of me wonders if it is simply because so many people are so devotedly in love with having an African American president. So much so that they so very much want him to be golden that they have made him more than his years will even allow. And unfortunately, I believe he is set up for much failure because of his inexperience. It seemed to me, as soon as he took office that he immediately realised that many of his goals were unrealistic, and promised rashly (guantanamo, Iraq, etc). So how did he get vaulted to stardom ahead of others? Truly, there were better and more established African American candidates who are just as well spoken — Harold T Ford Jr has a far more impressive resume, and he is even better looking. 😉
Reagan was a hero to many, many people — but he also had a long career, first in Hollywood politics, then in California, before the Presidency.
President Obama — it is curious to me. I don't know how else to put it. I believe that many people are in love with him, and it is dangerous to be in love with any leader. They are all human, and though we see them on television, we do NOT know them. We only know, or seem to know, what the press wants us to know. And when the press wants me to love someone, anyone, I get nervous, no matter what party they lay claim to.
All I can say is, I've never heard anyone say anything about Reagan that puts him on a pedestal; if you have, living in the Bay Area, I really wonder where that came from.
Also, I don't think I'm conflating; rather, I'm situating them as points on a continuum, which I think they are in this case (though not necessarily as an absolute rule). I could be wrong about that, of course, but that's my take on this.
I will certainly grant that if Gov. Palin wins in, say, 2012 or 2016, hero worship of her will very likely become a significant issue–though from what I've seen of her, I'd be surprised if she doesn't try to deflate it (even if only out of a sense of the practical unwisdom of encouraging such a thing). Right now, though, I don't see much of it; I think you're misreading some things.
Oh, and you say you're glad Obama's a Democrat because that means he's "supported by a catastrophically incompetent and ineffectual party"–which presumably implies that if he weren't, he wouldn't be. Have you by chance paid any attention to the GOP lately? I don't think your implied comment is at all justifiable.
Tyler Dawn–very well put. I actually think Rep. Ford would have been a fantastic candidate for President; the only problem is, without the Senate or a governorship on his record, he'd never be taken seriously. I suspect, though, that if he'd won his try for the Senate, he would have made a bid for the White House as well in '08 . . . I have no idea how that would have come out, but it would have been fascinating political theater.
Err, that should be "implied compliment."
Also, one specific example re: your reading of C4P: you took a shot at R. A. Mansour's "Joan of Arc" post in a way that makes me think you didn't read it. If you had, you would have known that the label "Alaska's Joan of Arc" was one bestowed on Gov. Palin by the Anchorage Daily News, which is no friend of hers (and nothing close, in fact); R. A. was using the label for purposes of analysis, commentary and comparison, not holding Gov. Palin up as a hero figure.
You are right about the Senate thing — though I fail to see how 10 years as a distinguished and well-respected (by both sides) Congressman is viewed as being less weighty than a few years as a Senator, most of which were spent on the Campaign trail.
Personally, I voted for Alan Keyes in the Presidential Primaries in 2000. I adore that man. My dream election for our first African American President would have been between Keyes/Rice and Ford/not sure who for VP on the ticket, both of whom I admire.
I fail to see how 10 years as a distinguished and well-respected (by both sides) Congressman is viewed as being less weighty than a few years as a Senator, most of which were spent on the Campaign trail.
I'm not saying it makes sense, but there's still the perception that the House is the JV, the Senate is the varsity–unless you work your way up to Speaker, anyway, and if you manage that, you'd be an idiot to step down to run for President.
As for Keyes, I don't think I ever had the opportunity to vote for him; but there was certainly a time when I would have loved to have seen him as the GOP standard-bearer (I get the sense that all the campaigning has radicalized his spirit to an unhelpful degree–though I'm obviously watching from a distance, via the media, so that could be distorted). He's still the most formidable pure politician I've ever seen, and I appreciate his unwavering commitment to the pro-life cause.