There's a big problem for the Obama supporters

who have placed him on a pedestal

as something completely new

It's increasingly apparent

that Obama is merely a politician,

an operator who chases votes for a living

There's nothing new about that

Since Obama did exceptionally well at Harvard Law, graduating magna cum laude and serving as editor-in-chief of the Harvard Law Review, you would have expected his accomplishments to engender some hostility among his classmates. But they didn't.

Harvard Law School is a pretty intimate place, and there's no way anyone could fool not only so many people but apparently all the people over a three year period.

As this campaign has worn on and Obama has progressively become a less attractive figure, I still take comfort from his former classmates' high regard for him.

But there's another side to such uniform popularity. Remaining in virtually everyone's good graces requires a fair amount of work. It requires a form of day-to-day politicking that most people eschew. People who achieve such popularity have to work at it.

In this way, he's the consummate politician who feeds on the fondness of others in a way that would be foreign to normal people.

As this long campaign continues to reveal Obama as a traditional politician, his candidacy suffers from the comparison between the mythical Obama who purportedly practices a new form of politics and the real Obama, a politician who pursues office with the same zeal and in much the same manner as his predecessors and contemporaries.

Obama Wants to Be Worshipped [The Messiah Complex]

Barack Obama has a messiah complex and no one will convince me otherwise.

You can find the prepared version of his victory speech in Wisconsin here, and watch the video of his delivery here.

Comparing the two reveals that Obama improvises quite a bit, and does so impressively. But what he improvises is some awfully heady, almost messianic, stuff.

Here's a lengthy improvised section that I transcribed off the video. It's gorgeous, especially when you hear the crowd respond to it. But Obama puts himself in some exclusive company:

Nothing worthwhile in this country has ever happened unless somebody, somewhere is willing to hope. Somebody is willing to stand up.

Somebody who is willing to stand up when they are told "No you can't" and instead they say, "Yes we can."

That's how this country was founded. A group of patriots declaring independence against a mighty British empire—nobody gave them a chance—but they said, "Yes we can." That's how slaves and abolitionists resisted that wicked system, and how a new president charted a course to ensure we would not remain half slave and half free.

That's how the greatest generation—my grandfather fighting in Patton's Army, my grandmother staying at home with a baby and still working on a Bomber assembly line—how that greatest generation overcame Hitler and fascism, and also lifted themselves up out of a Great Depression.

That's how pioneers went West when people told them it was dangerous, they said, "Yes we can."

That's how immigrants traveled from distant shores when people said their fates would be uncertain, "Yes we can."

That's how women won the right to vote, how workers won the right to organize, how young people like you traveled down South to march and sit in and go to jail, and some were beaten and some died for freedom's cause. That's what hope is. That's what hope is.

That's what hope is.

That moment when we shed our fears and our doubts. When we don't settle for what the cynics tell us we have to accept. Because cynicism is a sorry sort of wisdom.

When we instead join arm in arm and decide we are going to remake this country, block by block, precinct by precinct, county by county, state by state. That's what hope is.

There's a moment in the life of every generation, when that spirit has to come through if we are to make our mark on history. And this is our moment.

This is our time.

This is our moment to do what? To march? To organize? No. To vote for Obama. As if simply by voting for one man, we make a mark upon this country as indelibly as those who fought the Nazis or sat at lunch counters.

But the easiness of Obama's movement isn't what bothers me most. I am profoundly troubled that any candidate would chart the course of American history as follows (and I'm rearranging Obama's history here to make it more chronological):

American Revolutionaries -> Manifest Destiny -> Slaves/Abolitionists -> Suffragettes -> the Labor Movement -> the Greatest Generation -> the Civil Rights Movement -> Himself.

Does this post play unhelpfully into the pernicious and growing Obamaism-as-cult meme that we'll likely see repeated over and over by the right wing if Obama gets the nomination? It does. Sorry.

But Obama's rhetoric makes an undeniable suggestion: that his election, not an eight-year administration that successfully implements his vision for America, would represent a moment in America of the grandest, most transformative kind. And that's a bit much.

The Hyping of Obama

DURING FOX NEWS' COVERAGE of last night's Pennsylvania primary, the Keystone State's favorite son and prominent Obama supporter Senator Bob Casey Jr. made an appearance.

Like many Obama supporters, Casey didn't shy away from hyperbole when discussing his candidate. Referring to Obama, Casey flatly stated, "No candidate's ever come so far."

Perhaps, if one were inclined to be charitable to Casey, one could forgive his apparent forgetfulness regarding Abraham Lincoln, who merely emerged from a log cabin to save the Union. By any objective measure, Lincoln at the very least "came as far" as Obama.

But you don't have to look back to relatively ancient American history to find candidates who have come as far as Obama. Obama's journey is remarkable, but it's not particularly anomalous.

Obama grew up in a middle class household and attended his state's most exclusive boarding school. Those facts don't diminish how far he has come--anyone who comes as close to the presidency as Obama now is has by definition "come far."

But in recent history, other leaders came farther. Bill Clinton, like Obama, grew up in a non-traditional household. Additionally, Clinton had to deal with poverty and an abusive step-father.

Ronald Reagan grew up in grinding poverty and without the advantage of a world class education from the time he was out of short pants. In other words, every president of the last generation not named Bush has "come so far" as Barack Obama.

Admittedly, no one has yet accused Bob Casey of being the shrewdest or most thoughtful member of the Senate.

But his tiny piece of hyperbole fits in well with the kind of stuff Obama supporters typically sling. In their telling, Obama is something brand new, and the inability of the as-yet-unconverted to acknowledge Obama's uniqueness speaks poorly of them.

Chances are, this enthusiasm engenders a fair amount of hostility from people who have yet to accept Obama as their political savior.

Given the fact that late deciding voters in Pennsylvania broke for Hillary Clinton in a big way, there's the distinct possibility that this consistent strain of rhetoric isn't just turning off people who oppose Obama, but also undecided voters.

But there's still a bigger problem with the Obama supporters who have placed him on a pedestal as something completely new.

As we near the end of the primary season, it's becoming increasingly apparent that Barack Obama is merely a politician, a fellow who chases votes for a living. And there's nothing new about that.

SEVERAL MONTHS AGO, I dusted off my rolodex from the 1990's and began calling people who had attended law school with Barack Obama. (Because of my prior profession, I had made the acquaintance of dozens of Obama's former classmates.)

The results of my mini survey surprised me. Everyone I spoke with knew Obama. Even more surprisingly, everyone I spoke with adored him.

Not a single person had a negative thing to say about him. And yes, there were some conservatives in the sample group.

The uniformly pro-Obama sentiments were surprising. Law schools are full of future lawyers, and needless to say many lawyers are small and petty people.

Since Obama did exceptionally well at Harvard Law, graduating magna cum laude and serving as editor-in-chief of the Harvard Law Review, you would have expected his accomplishments to engender some hostility among his classmates. But they didn't.

In the past, I've taken the results of my personal poll as an assurance that Barack Obama is a decent guy. Harvard Law School is a pretty intimate place, and there's no way anyone could fool not only so many people but apparently all the people over a three year period.

As this campaign has worn on and Obama has progressively become a less attractive figure, I still take comfort from his former classmates' high regard for him.

But there's another side to such uniform popularity. Remaining in virtually everyone's good graces requires a fair amount of work. It requires a form of day-to-day politicking that most people eschew. People who achieve such popularity have to work at it.

In this way, he's the consummate politician who feeds on the fondness of others in a way that would be foreign to normal people.

BECAUSE OBAMA'S CHAMPIONS in the media have determined that he is unlike any politician who has come before him, no one has bothered to make a rather obvious comparison between Obama and Ronald Reagan.

A few months ago, when some courageous scribes had the unmitigated chutzpah to notice a significant fall-off in Obama's performance when he didn't have a teleprompter feeding him the words to say, the left protested in outrage.

Since then, it has become conventional wisdom to note that Obama struggles when speaking extemporaneously.

The Obama campaign itself has acknowledged this fact by making Obama unavailable to the press and canceling any future debates with Hillary Clinton after his calamitous performance in Pennsylvania's last tussle.

Of course, Ronald Reagan had a similar pattern in his later public performances. Unfortunately for the Gipper, the press wasn't quite so pliant.

The media loved to point out how Reagan's efforts during Michael Deaver-orchestrated set-pieces differed from his stumbling performances when he had to speak off the cuff at press conferences.

Late in his second term, the press relished the chance to describe in some detail how much Reagan had to prepare for press conferences, lest he (in their telling) make a fool of himself.

Reagan's media critics used his relative struggles with extemporaneous speaking as prima facie evidence that Reagan was a dullard.

Of course, there is a major difference between Reagan and Obama. Before entering presidential politics, Reagan had spent decades refining and expressing his political philosophy.

Obama's political philosophy remains something of a cipher. Often, Obama's views seem like they're half-baked, and that Obama hasn't carefully considered the issues that he expounds on.

When Obama discussed the capital gains tax at the Pennsylvania debate, he came across as surprisingly ill-informed.

His promise to tour the world and chat up our enemies sounded more like a knee-jerk reaction than a policy he arrived at after careful reflection.

And then there's the frequent whiff of political opportunism that Obama's posturing gives off.

For much of the campaign, Obama posed as a tireless enemy of free trade deals. Then, when amongst friends in San Francisco, he suggested that hostility to free trade is merely the product of hard times.

Earlier, an Obama advisor had made a trip to Canada where he urged our hockey-breathing trade partners to not believe Obama's campaign rhetoric on trade issues.

Such antics aren't in themselves a hanging offense. Americans expect their politicians to opportunistically pursue office.

The problem is that Obama's supporters insist he is something different, a trans-partisans figure who has entered the political arena only with the loftiest of motives.

Who knows? Perhaps they're right. But one can reasonably doubt that they're correct until proven otherwise. The conclusion that Obama is a vote-chasing machine like other office-seekers is not a manifestly unreasonable one.

The credulity of the most ardent Obama supporters is unbecoming. Their hostility to those who refuse to share their credulity is even less attractive.

Yet perhaps the ultimate irony is that their shrill advocacy actually damages their candidate.

As this long campaign continues to reveal Obama as a traditional politician, his candidacy suffers from the comparison between the mythical Obama who purportedly practices a new form of politics and the real Obama, a politician who pursues office with the same zeal and in much the same manner as his predecessors and contemporaries.