The Koolaid Kult Exposed

This week’s The Economist came with the usual stuff. I almost left it on the pile of things to read later. Last night, in a fit of insomnia, I turned to Lexington’s weekly take on U.S. politics. The title surprised and beckoned. “The Obama Cult” is hopefully one of the first serious pieces in the Main Stream Media to take a look at the Elmer Gantry style political experience that was 2008.

Mr Obama has inspired more passionate devotion than any modern American politician. People scream and faint at his rallies. Some wear T-shirts proclaiming him “The One” and noting that “Jesus was a community organiser”. An editor at Newsweek described him as “above the country, above the world; he’s sort of God.” He sets foreign hearts fluttering, too. A Pew poll published this week finds that 93% of Germans expect him to do the right thing in world affairs. Only 14% thought that about Mr Bush.

Perhaps Mr Obama inwardly cringes at the personality cult that surrounds him. But he has hardly discouraged it. As a campaigner, he promised to “change the world”, to “transform this country” and even (in front of a church full of evangelicals) to “create a Kingdom right here on earth”. As president, he keeps adding details to this ambitious wish-list. He vows to create millions of jobs, to cure cancer and to seek a world without nuclear weapons. On July 20th he promised something big (a complete overhaul of the health-care system), something improbable (to make America’s college-graduation rate the highest in the world by 2020) and something no politician could plausibly accomplish (to make maths and science “cool again”).

So, what started this Brit to dissect what our country did to itself with the cult of personality during an especially challenging time in our history? You can take a look at Lexington’s blog and see that he was inspired by what he calls a prescient book by Gene Healy entitled “The Cult of the Presidency, Updated: America’s Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power.” This book was published by the Cato Institute and was written during the Bush years. Lexington’s blog summary makes me want to pick the book up and dive in despite Mr. Healy’s well known credentials as a libertarian scholar/philosopher. (Okay, so did I warn you enough that the original source is not a certified, PC, liberal meme?)

Gene Healy argues that because voters expect the president to do everything, candidates promise far more than they can possibly deliver.

When they inevitably fail to keep their promises, voters swiftly become disillusioned. Yet they never lose their romantic idea that the president should drive the economy, vanquish enemies, lead the free world, comfort tornado victims, heal the national soul and protect borrowers from hidden credit-card fees.

No president in the modern era has raised expectations like Barack Obama, so he is unusually likely to disappoint. The polls already show signs of disillusion, especially among independent voters.

I don’t buy the whole of Mr Healy’s argument, but he makes some interesting points. To win a presidential election in America, you have to say things you know to be untrue. If you make it too obvious, like John “I’ll make every school an outstanding school” Edwards, you will stumble. But the system rewards those who can peddle plausible snake oil, and excludes anyone who is scrupulous about telling the truth.

The book includes countless vignettes illustrating the oddness of those who are prepared to do what it takes to become president. One of the more surprising concerns Lyndon Johnson. When asked by a reporter in the Oval Office why America was in Vietnam, he unzipped his fly, waved the presidential member at his questioner and replied: “This is why!”

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