Is Barack Obama "A Face in the Crowd"?

On Saturday, June 14, I watched the 1957 Elia Kazan film "A Face in the Crowd" on Turner Classic Movies. I had seen most of it before but was strangely drawn to it again. Instinct told me that the movie had special relevance to the 2008 presidential election, although I didn't know exactly how. After a second viewing, I understood. "A Face in the Crowd" is eerily similar to Barack Obama's candidacy.

Although I came to this conclusion on my own, I am not the first person to voice this opinion. A video clip listed under "Barack Obama--A Face in the Crowd?" was posted on YouTube on May 3, 2008.

In "A Face in the Crowd," a young Andy Griffith gives a tour de force performance as Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes, a coarse but charming drifter with a gift for song and gab. Local radio reporter Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal) discovers Rhodes while broadcasting from an Arkansas jail. Sensing his talent, Marcia gets Rhodes released early and convinces him to be a regular on her show. She unknowingly creates a monster.

With his folksy, populist charm, Rhodes meteorically rises in the media, eventually starring in a wildly successful television show in New York City. He also becomes a key adviser to a presidential candidate. A shameless womanizer drunk on his own power, Rhodes has utter contempt for his adoring audience.

At first glance, Rhodes seems more like Bill Clinton in 1992 than Barack Obama today. All three men are superb orators. But like Clinton, and unlike Obama, Rhodes has an outsized appetite for women. Rhodes plays the guitar on his programs; Clinton played the saxophone on "Saturday Night Live." Mr. Obama does not play an instrument. Rhodes and Clinton are from Arkansas; Mr. Obama grew up in Hawaii and lives in Chicago. Rhodes and Clinton are coarse; Obama is well-mannered.

The most important difference between Rhodes and Obama is that Rhodes is a demagogue and Obama is not. The American Heritage Dictionary (2001) defines "demagogue" as "a leader who obtains power by appealing to the emotions and prejudices of the populace." Mr. Obama clearly appeals to emotions in his soaring oratory, but he stridently avoids appealing to prejudice. In fact, his entire candidacy is based upon uniting people and deemphasizing their differences.

All that said, there is a fundamental similarity between Rhodes and Obama that trumps Clinton's resemblance to Rhodes. Like Rhodes, Obama is more than a man. He's a phenomenon. At his most popular, Bill Clinton could not repeatedly pack stadiums with 20,000-plus people. Barack Obama has. Bill Clinton never tossed bottles of Poland Spring into crowds to revive audience members who had fainted during his speeches. Obama did. There is a scene in "A Face in the Crowd" in which Rhodes judges a baton-twirling contest in front of an Obama-sized audience at an airport. And in Obama-like fashion, a gaggle of female faces rapturously looks on.

Bill Clinton's sexual prowess notwithstanding, Mr. Obama is far more appealing to women than Bubba ever was. In contrast to Clinton's boorishness, Obama's slim figure and genteel personality have an almost feminine quality. Obama is hipper, cooler, and sexier than the 1992 Bill Clinton. This aura is the essence of Obama's candidacy--whether he likes it or not.

With his rock star appeal, Obama wields immense power. That power can be used for good or ill. As I have said in previous commentaries, I believe that Mr. Obama is well-intentioned, but I have my doubts. His disturbing associations with radicals such as the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, and Bernardine Dohrn raise serious questions about his character. Does Mr. Obama hold radical views? Is he sympathetic to them? What kind of advisers and cabinet members would an Obama Administration have? At this point, we do not know enough about Mr. Obama to definitively answer these queries. This situation, in combination with a cult of personality, is deeply troubling.

In "A Face in the Crowd," Rhodes describes his audience as "rednecks, crackers, hillbillies, hausfraus, shut-ins, pea pickers--everybody that's got to jump when somebody else blows the whistle." This remark resembles Mr. Obama's comment at a San Francisco event when he said that economically displaced, white, blue collar workers in the heartland are "bitter" and "cling to guns or religion or anti-immigrant sentiment." Obama's statement was surreptitiously recorded behind closed doors. That audio nearly destroyed Obama's presidential aspirations.

Rhodes is similarly undone by Marcia when, at the end of a show, she adjusts the television engineer's dials while the program credits are rolling. Millions of listeners can now hear what Rhodes really thinks of them. Rhodes calls them "idiots" and "morons," singling out working class people in particular.

Is Obama's "bitter" comment a mere gaffe or a candid assessment? I suspect it's the former, but I can't say for sure.

At the pinnacle of his popularity, Rhodes advises presidential candidate Senator Worthington Fuller (Marshall Neilan). Senator Fuller is a stuffy fellow and a dead ringer for John McCain with a mustache. Fuller is desperate for a marketing makeover, and Rhodes readily obliges. "You've gotta be loved, man!" Rhodes bellows. "You need a whole new personality."

Mr. Obama has undergone his own metamorphosis. Prior to 2000, he was a wooden speaker. Michael Weisskopf explains the transformation in a May 8, 2008 Time Magazine article titled "Obama: How He Learned to Win." After Mr. Obama lost a Congressional race that year, "he jettisoned his Harvard-tested speaking style for something more down home...he learned how to be different things to different people."

In "A Face in the Crowd," General Haynesworth (Percy Waram), who has also come under Rhodes's spell, tells presidential candidate Fuller that "people want catchy slogans..."Time for a change."" Sound familiar?

Rhodes, like Obama, is intensely loved. During the baton-twirling contest, Rhodes nearly gets his clothes ripped off by female fans. On his New York television show, which garners a 50-plus Nielsen rating, he enlists a trio of scantily clad dancers to hawk Vitajex, a sugar pill marketed as a miracle dietary supplement. A Marilyn Monroe lookalike is seen lounging in bed, calling for "Lonesome."

Similar infatuation is being heaped upon Obama. Check out this YouTube video featuring a cute female singer performing a paean to Obama on the beach. A June 16, 2008 New York Post article has images of catchy Obama campaign buttons. One shows 27-year-old Chelsea Clinton smiling with a speech bubble underneath her that says, "Don't Tell Mama, I'm Votin' For Obama!" Another has a bikini-clad woman in a provocative pose with the words "O Bama You Barack My World!" printed over her torso.

It is important to note that these advertisements have not been put out by Mr. Obama's campaign and that he has no control over them. They vividly demonstrate the power of Barack Obama's magnetism, a trait he strongly shares with Rhodes. This is political marketing on steroids. It is an irrepressible force.

The fictional phenomenon of Lonesome Rhodes hit movie theaters in 1957. The real phenomenon of Barack Obama is being played out in the political theater of 2008. Both demonstrate how hero worship can drive public opinion. Rhodes is a villain. Obama is an idealist with a checkered past. Caution. Yellow lights are flashing down the highway.