Jonah Goldberg, National ReviewIn one of my favorite episodes of Star Trek, Captain Kirk is mistaken for a god by inhabitants of a planet of Native Americans (it’s a long story). The illusion works for Kirk until a jealous shaman cuts Kirk’s hand, revealing that the divine being is just a man after all. “Behold! A god who bleeds!” the shaman mocks, exposing Kirk as a fraud to the rest of the tribe.
It may sound like a stretch — and, let’s be fair, it is — but I keep thinking of that episode when I look Barack Obama’s poll numbers these days....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 isnÂ’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....