Andrew Sullivan:
"What he didn't do was give an airy, abstract, dreamy confection of rhetoric. The McCain campaign set Obama up as a celebrity airhead, a Paris Hilton of wealth and elitism. And he let them portray him that way, and let them over-reach, and let them punch him again and again ... and then he turned around and destroyed them. If the Rove Republicans thought they were playing with a patsy, they just got a reality check."
[Italics mine] If that's true, and Obama let the over-reach, knowing full well that he would be able to parry their assaults with such convincing facility, he is either mad and lucky or a politician of unfathomable genius, a politician with an understanding of human interrelations that rivals Lorenzo Il Magnifico. And damn, we need a Renaissance now.
Of course, the more likely explanation is that Obama failed to prevent Sen. McCain gaining traction these last few weeks, and he is also a good enough thinker and speech giver that he was able to respond effectively tonight. In itself, this accomplishment is hugely impressive--Obama may very well be an historical figure on the scale of Napoleon, a real epoch maker. But still I think Mr. Sullivan is probably wrong--I suppose Obama simply have lost those news cycles over the past few weeks, and was not losing on purpose. Either way, Obama might easily become the most powerful politician in a long time. He is certainly trying to be a more powerful president than Clinton ever attempted; Bill Clinton's political aims were limited by certain political means, necessary at that good and bad time (good for what had happened and bad for whom had claimed credit), which were fundamentally defensive. The power that Obama goes for is very great, and therein lies both the excitement surrounding and the possible danger of Barack Obama. He is a man of doubt, of great intelligence, trying very hard to do right. I'm fairly sure of all these things. His success or failure will reflect upon the relative goodness of human nature. He is now a truly heroic figure, like the pagans' mythic figures, there on Olympus. Tonight was his apotheosis.
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