The Cult of Obama

I wrote in a previous post, and still believe, that Barack Obama is a good person and will be a major improvement over the disaster that was George W. Bush. His election is also great for race relations and surely means even more to many African Americans than I, as a white man born decades after Jim Crow ended, can fully understand. I still disagree with our President Elect on a lot of issues, especially his Keynesian stimulus garbage, but his tax and spend is better than Bush’s borrow and spend. What concerns me is this cult of personality that has sprouted up around Obama.

It’s almost like Barack Obama has been knighted as the Messiah of America. Conservative talk radio is often hyperbolic, but I think they got the mainstream media’s (other than the neoconservative Fox News) kids glove approach to Obama right. However, what’s more disconcerting than this media fawning is the millions of people who seem to just seem to fall heads over heels for him.

I’ve had a couple of friends on facebook constantly post pro Obama related material in their profile and there are currently 1,156,677 confirmed guests to Obama’s inauguration on facebook despite the fact that you can’t attend his inauguration via facebook. For the real thing over two million people are expected to attend the actual inauguration. I unfortunately missed the parties after he was elected, but I heard they were out of control.

Now, this isn’t necessarily bad, I mean it’s good that people are getting involved in politics. But there seems to be a feeling that his election will save us all from financial ruin, terrorism, war, greedy corporations, racism, sexism, crime, foreclosure, layoffs, bird flu and athletes foot. I mean look at all these Hollywood stars falling all over themselves for Obama in music videos like this one, this one, this one, and of course Obama girl.

What’s stranger and more disheartening are the youth choirs singing about how great Obama is. I don’t mean to compare Obama to Hitler, but I’m sorry the hero worship is just too reminiscent. Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.

It’s not a surprise that some conservative writers have picked up on this but even liberal economist Paul Krugman picked up on it during the primaries. Unbridled executive power is extraordinarily dangerous as we’ve seen in the fascist and communist states of the 20th century and we need to be very careful about how much power we allow our presidents to have. Bush, like many before him, increased executive power significantly which liberals have rightfully criticized. Now, however they’re jumping all over themselves for a president who will almost certainly expand the federal government.

We have to pull ourselves back from in this cult of the presidency in general and the cult of Obama in particular. The intent of the founders and the explicit language in our Constitution was meant to limit the power of the president. Hell, the original Articles of Confederation didn’t even have a president! Now there were problems then (think slavery), but a powerful executive is simply the antithesis of liberty and while it’s great Bush is gone, it’s time for Obama fanatics (and Obama himself) to relax.

Or we can just laugh at them.