Barrel Strength

Fouad Ajami, a professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the School of Advanced International Studies provides an Arab perspective on the mass hysteria and BHO in a WSJ article.

There is something odd — and dare I say novel — in American politics about the crowds that have been greeting Barack Obama on his campaign trail. Hitherto, crowds have not been a prominent feature of American politics. We associate them with the temper of Third World societies….

On the face of it, there is nothing overwhelmingly stirring about Sen. Obama. There is a cerebral quality to him, and an air of detachment. He has eloquence, but within bounds (of a functioning teleprompter – AG). After nearly two years on the trail, the audience can pretty much anticipate and recite his lines. The political genius of the man is that he is a blank slate. The devotees can project onto him what they wish….

Save in times of national peril, Americans have been sober, really minimalist, in what they expected out of national elections, out of politics itself. The outcomes that mattered were decided in the push and pull of daily life, by the inventors and the entrepreneurs, and the captains of industry and finance. To be sure, there was a measure of willfulness in this national vision, for politics and wars guided the destiny of this republic. But that American sobriety and skepticism about politics — and leaders — set this republic apart from political cultures that saw redemption lurking around every corner…

America is a different land, for me exceptional in all the ways that matter. In recent days, those vast Obama crowds, though, have recalled for me the politics of charisma that wrecked Arab and Muslim societies. A leader does not have to say much, or be much. The crowd is left to its most powerful possession — its imagination.

From Elias Canetti again: “But the crowd, as such, disintegrates. It has a presentiment of this and fears it. . . . Only the growth of the crowd prevents those who belong to it from creeping back under their private burdens.”

The morning after the election, the disappointment will begin to settle upon the Obama crowd. Defeat — by now unthinkable to the devotees — will bring heartbreak. Victory will steadily deliver the sobering verdict that our troubles won’t be solved by a leader’s magic.

At least they will have free medical care to tide them over when reality strikes after the victory.  As for the now unlikely defeat, bureacrats might consider doubling up shifts on suicide hotlines.

… this time without that thing about the Jews.  A recent survey in Germany put forth some interesting views.

The overwhelming majority of Germans would welcome the nationalisation of large segments of the economy, including its energy, transport and financial infrastructure, according to a new opinion poll that underlines the strength of popular opposition to free-market liberalism in Europe’s largest economy.

…77 per cent of respondents thought the state should take large equity stakes in German energy companies while 64 per cent said financial institutions should be at least partly nationalised.  Another 60 per cent said Germany’s former state monopolies – Lufthansa, the airline, Deutsche Post and the Deutsche Bahn railway operator – and their private-sector competitors should either come or stay under state ownership…. A large minority of 40 to 45 per cent said nationalisations or partial nationalisations should extend to the telecommunications, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and farming sectors.

Sometimes it is not the idea, but the execution, the survey responders seem to be saying.