Quotes and pictures gratefully lifted from "Is Barack Obama the Messiah?
"the atmosphere at these events is such that one wonders If Obama is about to walk out with a basket with some loaves of bread and fishes to feed the thousands...""It's not so much by what he says but it's the way the crowds respond to his words. When 16,000 people, without prompting, start shouting some of his keynote phrases as he delivers them, you know something special is going on."
Washington correspondent Geoff Elliott The Australian February 9, 2008.
How does a cult figure, in the eyes of some something akin to a messiah, make the transition to a political frontrunner - president even - where disappointment will soon crush what seemed to be a journey to a promised land? He empowers us with words and the authentic emotion behind them and people are rushing into the tent to drink that magic water.
At an Omaha, Neb., rally the day before, supporters leaned perilously over railings, screaming and crying, trying to touch Obama as he passed. During both speeches, a supporter yelled out, "I love you." This happens fairly frequently and Obama is always ready with a smooth answer."I love you back," he says, with a quick, almost cocky smile.
The campaign works hard to cultivate the rock star image. After he's introduced, Obama routinely waits about 30 seconds to enter the arena. The excitement grows, until his entrance is perfectly timed with the soaring chords of U2's “City of Blinding Lights.” "I can't really verbalize exactly what it is about him," says Avila. "Part of it is just beyond explanation."
I did not know the tall guy in front of me; he is white, I am black. But at the moment we shook hands, I felt some solidarity with this stranger, consummated by a handshake and signifying some unspoken agreement presumably about Barack Obama and his core message of UNITY!I call this hand-shake scenario the "BAM" because, descriptively, it takes a bit of Obama's name and it's the sound of a collision, of People Coming Together!
. . about a half-hour into a speech here, the Illinois Democrat announced that he had to take a quick break. "Gotta blow my nose here for a second," Obama said. Out came a Kleenex (or perhaps it was a hankie), and he wiped his nose. The near-capacity audience at the Reunion Arena, which his campaign said totaled 17,000, broke out in applause. One can only imagine what THAT Kleenex would be worth on e-bay....
“I would characterize the Senate race as being a race where Obama was, let’s say, blessed and highly favored. That’s not routine. There’s something else going on. I think that Obama, his election to the Senate, was divinely ordered. . . . I know that that was God’s plan."-Bill Rush
"Obama has the capacity to summon heroic forces from the spiritual depths of ordinary citizens and to unleash therefrom a symphonic chorus of unique creative acts whose common purpose is to tame the soul and alleviate the great challenges facing mankind."-- Gerald Campbell
"Obama's finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don't even really inspire. They elevate. . . . He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh . . . Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves."-- Ezra Klein
"This is bigger than Kennedy. . . . This is the New Testament." "I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often. No, seriously. It's a dramatic event."-- Chris Matthews
He is not operating on the same plane as ordinary politicians. . . . the agent of transformation in an age of revolution, as a figure uniquely qualified to open the door to the 21st century."-- Gary Hart
Obama is known for choosing his words very carefully. His admirers say that’s a sign of his conscientious nature, that he doesn’t want to inadvertently say the wrong thing, to speak irresponsibly. The truth is, Obama is determined to say next to nothing substantive at all, unless it is designed to position himself in some mellow region between opposing forces. Obama claims, "I didn't expect to find myself in this position a year ago.” Amazing. I suppose that’s why he has been so careful to navigate to the right of his fellow Democratic senator from Illinois, Dick Durbin; why he spent 2005 and 2006 mouthing “mush” on the Iraq war, and still continues to do so; why he said three weeks before being sworn in as U.S. senator, that he would not push for universal health care – the very issue that had made him a darling of progressives as a state senator, but which had burned Hillary Clinton when she was First Lady. Obama runs from even the flicker of a flame.
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