Hillary Impersonates Barack Obama

On Sunday, February 24, 2008, Hillary Clinton showed another side of herself at a campaign rally in Providence, RI. CNN ran video which is now posted on The Huffington Post and many other web sites, of Sen. Clinton mimicking or ridiculing the messianic message of her Democratic opponent, Barack Obama. She said, "I could stand up here and say 'Let's just get everybody together, let's get unified, the sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect.'"

She is certainly not the first to comment on Barack's heavenly rhetoric. Journalists, opinion writers, and a multitude of blogs have been discussing the style and substance of Barack's campaign for over a year now. For example, Slate magazine inaugurated "The Obama Messiah Watch" back in January of 2007.

Joel Stein, of the LA Times, wrote of Obamaphilia, and his own need to "de-Romeo-ize" Barack, and he is a vocal supporter. "On Faith," the online conversation on religion produced jointly by The Washington Post and Newsweek, is full of discussions with headlines such as, "Is Obama a (or the) Messiah?"

All that aside, the words of Barack himself appear to deliver a messianic message. Nat Hentoff reported in the Village Voice that Barack used these words in a stump speech at Dartmouth College, "My job this morning is to be so persuasive . . . that a light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany, and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Barack."

Is it really any wonder that conservative outlets like The National Review are having a grand time on their media blog showing a photo of Barack speaking, next to Raphael's painting of Christ, "The Transfiguration," with the headline, "Spot the Difference?" Or that J.R.Dunn surmises in American Thinker that to liberals, "A leader is a transcendent being, someone more than human, someone with a touch of the divine."

While the public may have enjoyed Hillary poking fun, there was a point behind the humor; she went on to say, in all seriousness,"...I have no illusions about how hard this is going to be. You are not going to wave a magic want and have the special interests go away."

The race for the Democratic nomination has been categorized as one between hope and experience, but maybe the divide in the party is in philosophy between Hegelian idealism and realism. Journalist Sidney J. Harris describes the difference, "An idealist believes the short run doesn't count....A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run." In the middle of a war, America will have to decide whether it can afford idealism or not.