'Airborne'

"Before Palin, Obama was the ultimate celebrity candidate. For no presidential nominee in living memory had the gap between adulation and achievement been so great . . . Obama's meteoric rise was based not on issues . . . but on narrative, on eloquence, on charisma.

The unease at the Denver convention, the feeling of buyer's remorse, was the Democrats' realization that the arc of Obama's celebrity had peaked -- and had now entered a period of its steepest decline . . . It was inevitable. Obama had managed to stay aloft for four full years. But no one can levitate forever.

Five speeches map Obama's trajectory:

1. . . his brilliant and moving 2004 Democratic convention speech. It turned an obscure state senator into a national figure and legitimate presidential candidate.


2. . . his Iowa caucus victory when he gave an equally stirring speech of the highest tones that dazzled a national audience just tuning in.


3. . . the night of the last primary . . To top himself, Obama had to reach. Hence his triumphal declaration that history would note that night, his victory, his ascension, as "the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."


4. . . Not yet seeing how the pseudo-messianism was wearing thin, he did Berlin and finally jumped the shark. That grandiloquent proclamation of universalist puffery popped the bubble. The grandiosity had become bizarre.


5. . . (his) Denver acceptance speech was deliberately pedestrian, State-of-the-Union-ish, programmatic and only briefly (that lovely coda recalling the March on Washington) lyrical.

The problem is that Obama began believing in his own magical powers -- the chants, the swoons, the "we are the ones" self-infatuation. Like Ronald Reagan, he was leading a movement, but one entirely driven by personality. Reagan's revolution was rooted in concrete political ideas (supply-side economics, welfare-state deregulation, national strength) that transcended one man. For Obama's movement, the man is the transcendence.

One star fades, another is born. The very next morning McCain picks Sarah Palin and a new celebrity is launched . . . But her job is easier. She only has to remain airborne for seven more weeks. Obama maintained altitude for an astonishing four years."

From "Obama's Altitude Sickness" by Charles Krauthammer published Friday, September 12, 2008 in The Washington Post.