The blessed one

Truly, President Barack Obama is blessed.

The first black president, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for emoting peace, somehow suggests an antidote to America’s post-Cold War angst. (The Nobel committee literally said they were rewarding him for “values and attitudes shared by a majority of the world's population.") Unlike his predecessor, President Obama signals that he won’t be dragged into partisan politics. His calm, measured tones suggest a higher calling. Is he pulling out of Iraq? Closing Guantánamo Bay? Reforming healthcare? What, precisely, has he accomplished? We pause for a moment of contemplation, and then the thought wafts away. No one is asking too insistently. That is the charm of the blessed man. It is enough for us merely to bask in his oven of hope.

But be wary of the blessing. Americans love to put their leaders on pedestals just to tear them down. And the fortune of being a blessed man often carries with it a dark undercurrent of mean, personal vanity that slowly erodes its carrier and disappoints the recently brainwashed masses who huddle around him.


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