Some British perspective on Obama

See this from The Guardian.

Like Will Smith, who in the new film I Am Legend wakes up to find himself the last man alive in a world of zombies, am I now the only person left on the planet who finds Barack Obama a little bit dull? Every time I listen to him, I start off thinking I'm about to wet my pants, but a minute-and-a-half later find my mind wandering, asking itself things like: 'What does "the challenge of hope" mean?'

Yet I turn and look around and everyone is shouting and screaming. Obama chants: 'Something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it' and there's a collective swoon from grown pundits and hardened reporters, all of them tearing off their shirts and pleading for Obama to sign their chests with indelible marker pen. Will Smith woke up to a world of zombies: in my personal nightmare, everyone around me has an overactive thyroid.

So why does Obama, billed by everyone as a cross between Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln, but without the terrible looks of either, just leave me puzzled? Maybe it's because his is a rhetoric that soars and takes flight, but alights nowhere. It declares that together we can do anything, but doesn't mention any of the things we can do. It's a perpetual tickle in the nose that never turns into a sneeze. Trying to make sense of what he's saying is like trying to wrap mist. . . .

Maybe Obama is so successful because he's the supreme master of what American politics excels in: high-flown language that denotes as little as possible. . . .

One of the comments:

Obama is the i-pod of politics, the embodiment of something everybody seems to want even if they can't quite explain why. He's new, fresh, a superbly-presented piece of marketing, who could have been unveiled by Steve Jobs as a bold and bright challenge to the dreary and worn-out mainstream product.

But will your i-bama live up to its hype when you get it out of the box at Christmas? Will it stay ahead of the game and still look cool two years on? Will it really work better than Clinton 2.0? It looks so good on the TV ads, but what if it doesn't live up to its promise?

Too bad for the voters that they won't be able to take i-bama back to the shop if he turns out to be a bug-ridden, tinny knock-off of the mainstream product. The marketing men know this of course, which is why it's all about the dream. Election season is the season for unhitching from reality and letting dreams run wild. The marketing men are only too happy to oblige. Ah, the joys of American politics.

I-bama!! I-bama!!! That's what I want for Christmas!