Irrational hopes dashed, wrong lessons drawn

Jonah Goldberg and Krauthammer crow the messiah period is over...

From [Jonah's] column this morning [..]:

All presidents go through rough patches, and Obama’s no exception. Odds are his poll numbers will get better — and worse — in the years to come. All of this is typical.

But this misses a crucial point: Obama isn’t supposed to be a typical politician. He was supposed to be The One. He was supposed to change Washington. Transcend race. Fix souls. Bake twelve-minute brownies in seven minutes.

Oprah promised Obama would help us “evolve to a higher plane.” Deepak Chopra said Obama’s presidency represented “a quantum leap in American consciousness.” Last month, Newsweek editor Evan Thomas proclaimed that Obama stood “above the country, above — above the world, he’s sort of God.”

Well, now he’s the god who bleeds, and once you’re the god who bleeds, it’s hard to get the divinity back in the tube, as it were.

Obama undoubtedly has major accomplishments ahead of him, but in a real way the Obama presidency is over. His messianic hopey-changiness has been exposed for what it was, and what it could only be: a rich cocktail of pie-eyed idealism, campaign sloganeering, and profound arrogance.

As president, he’s tried to apply the post-partisan gloss of his campaign rhetoric to the hyper-partisan dross of his agenda. And he’s fooling fewer people every day.

Update: I like the synergy with Krauthammer's opening line:

Yesterday, Barack Obama was God. Today, he’s fallen from grace, the magic gone, his health-care reform dead.

Yes Jonah, Obama's humanity is plain for all to see. Surprise, surprise. Those still hoping for the second coming of Jesus Christ will be disappointed.

But when was it ever going to be otherwise? History shows people seek a messianic figures when they feel the most need. The origins of the irrational hope Obama rode during the election obviously never lay in anything superhuman about him, but rather rose out of the deep despair created by eight years of Mr. Cowboy in Chief, Dr. Evil, their sidekicks, and would-be successors.

Goldberg & Krauthammer should spend less time joking about Obama's humanity and more time answering for how badly their side fucked up in spreading war, torture, fiscal insolvency, Rovian cynicism, and incompetent cronyism.