The cult “was the campaign” to bring Obama “into power”

It’s always refreshing when a blogger, or, in this case, a blogress diva, you respect echoes a point I’ve made in a previous post.  Even if she didn’t read the post (& I highly doubt she did), it’s nice to know a smart pundit has a view similar to your own.

Just a few moments ago, when I discovered Glenn had just linked a post I had written on Monday, I followed another link in his post to learn that Ann Althouse echoed something I had written last week about former President Bush.

“Taking his popularity for granted in the wake of 9/11” I contended that Bush “didn’t work hard enough to burnish his image and defend his policies in the wake of unrelenting attacks on his character and motives.”  Today Ann Althouse reaches a similar conclusion:

Any glorification of [Bush] was a consequence of those events [attacks of 9/11] and not through a conscious campaign to inspire a cult of personality. . . .  When the love subsided, he and his people did little — too little — to pump us up again.

Exactly.

Ann, however, explores this issue of image with far greater depth than I did, comparing Bush team’s failure to build up their guy’s image with the Obama team’s dedication to that task:

By contrast, the entire plan to bring Obama into office depended on the glorification of the man, whose actual experience was so bizarrely limited that it took some nerve to claim to be ready. Magic was required. The cult grew up not as he held power and needed to respond to a crisis. The cult was the campaign to bring him into power.  It depended on our projecting all sorts of hopes and dreams onto him, and he knew it.

Read the whole thing. And bear in mind that these are not the rantings of an angry Obama opponent, but the thoughts of a woman who voted for the Democratic nominee last fall.  Indeed, Ann hopes that now that he’s in office, “he’ll do the job that must be done.”  I hope she’s right.

Related:  Why Leftists Assume Conservative Bloggers Revere Bush.