Obamarama

Peggy Noonan asks the questions about Barack Obama that have been flitting around the back of my mind as well:

He is uncompromised by a past, it is true. He is also unburdened by a record, unworn by achievement, unwearied by long labors.

What does he believe? What does he stand for? This is, after all, the central question. When it is pointed out that he has had almost--almost--two years in the U.S. Senate, and before that was an obscure state legislator in Illinois, his supporters compare him to Lincoln. But Lincoln had become a national voice on the great issue of the day, slavery. He rose with a reason. Sen. Obama's rise is not about a stand or an issue or a question; it is about Sen. Obama. People project their hopes on him, he says.

He's exactly right. Just so we all know it's projection.

He doesn't have an issue, he has a thousand issues, which is the same as having none, in the sense that a speech about everything is a speech about nothing. And on those issues he seems not so much to be guided by philosophy as by impulses, sentiments. From "The Audacity of Hope," his latest book: "[O]ur democracy might work a bit better if we recognized that all of us possess values that are worthy of respect." "I value good manners." When not attempting to elevate the bromidic to the profound, he lapses into the language of political consultants--"our message," "wedge issues," "moral language." Ronald Reagan had "a durable narrative." Parts of the book, the best parts, are warm, anecdotal, human. But much of it pretends to a seriousness that is not borne out. When speaking of the political past he presents false balance and faux fairness. (Reagan, again, despite his "John Wayne, Father Knows Best pose, his policy by anecdote and his gratuitous assaults on the poor" had an "appeal" Sen. Obama "understood." Ronnie would be so pleased.)

Our friends across the aisle and much of the MSM have been drooling over this guy recently the way teenaged boys used to drool over Farrah Fawcett posters when I was young. So far, the appeal seems to be about as deep. I can only hope, assuming he does run in '08, that people don't, erm, use the wrong organ in deciding to vote for him (if you know what I mean and I think you do).***

On the other hand, anything that scares the bejaysus out of Hillary Rodham Clinton Rodham can't be all bad, right?

(UPDATE: *** Who else out there used to watch Talk Soup (from which I borrow this line)? One of the funnier programs back in the day, although it never quite made the leap when John Henson left and Hal Sparks took over.)