To me, in these circumstances, that of "Hero-worship" becomes a fact inexpressibly precious; the most solacing fact one sees in the world at present. There is an everlasting hope in it for the management of the world. Had all traditions, arrangements, creeds, societies that men ever instituted, sunk away, this would remain. The certainty of Heroes being sent us; our faculty, our necessity, to reverence Heroes when sent: it shines like a polestar through smoke-clouds, dust-clouds, and all manner of down-rushing and conflagration.
In 1840 Thomas Carlyle presented six lectures on the theme of heroes. Considered one of the first proponents of the “Great Man of History” narrative, he went through the many heroic archetypes that have lived throughout the ages, from heroes in ancient ages being considered literally gods by their ancestors through oral tradition, to examples of modern kings.
The urge to follow and honor a worthy man has never left us. In the current empty age, this impulse has only grown more pronounced. We want to follow a man of strength and agency, descending like lightning to shatter the earth and create it anew, to take old forms and reinvigorate them or smash them to begin anew. The Great Man is an elevating force, the participants in the movement finding in themselves the same contagious zeal, focus, and idealism their leader emanates. He demands herculean tasks for himself, and knows how to galvinate his subordinates to heroic deeds.
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Contrary to deterministic thinking theorizing the Great Man as an inevitability of the environment and social forces, he argues the energy and spirit emanates from beyond the realm of science. While of course the Great Man is influenced by his upbringing, he is nonetheless a human earthquake, his fervent will and determination accomplishing his quest capable of shaping the world to his image. There is no inevitability in history, and the twists and turns of civilization are fought for, and won, by these hard men of vision.
Truly it is a sad thing for a people, as for a man, to fall into Scepticism, into dilettantism, insincerity; not to know Sincerity when they see it. For this world, and for all worlds, what curse is so fatal? The heart lying dead, the eye cannot see. What intellect remains is merely the vulpine intellect. That a true King be sent them is of small use; they do not know him when sent. They say scornfully, Is this your King? The Hero wastes his heroic faculty in bootless contradiction from the unworthy; and can accomplish little. For himself he does accomplish a heroic life, which is much, which is all; but for the world he accomplishes comparatively nothing. The wild rude Sincerity, direct from Nature, is not glib in answering from the witness-box: in your small-debt pie-powder court, he is scouted as a counterfeit. The vulpine intellect "detects" him.
The Great Man isn’t only courageous, risk-taking, and intelligent. He is Sincere. In order to truly reshape the world, it can’t be for simple vainglory, but an uncompromising vision, and the Mandate of Heaven to secure it. Contrary to a cynical reading of great leaders who do everything from a blind quest for power, they had to truly believe in their mission.
In our current political cycle, the idea of the Great Man has been the exclusive domain of the right, but in past years it has been the right who has eschewed the idea of the Great Man, implicitly considering the free market, American military dominance, and the worldwide “rules based order” as the culmination of the arc of history. The onward march of American democracy would span the globe, and after Reagan successfully brought down the Evil Empire, the idea of a great man in charge of the world’s most powerful nation came across as radical and destabilizing. The age of such heroes had passed, and what was needed was eternal vigilance in maintaining what we had, not a revolutionizing figure experimenting in new ways.
The Left didn’t see things this way. They saw a nation full of oppression, the stain of racism and inequality still unwashed. They saw working class citizens getting short thrift while capitalism continued to create wealthy only for the already rich. The arc of the nation was not in a stable orbit, but needed to be transformed, reinvigorated to a new form. Reagan had failed in creating the City on the Hill. The left saw their own City, and yearned to make it a reality.
After the disaster of the War on Terror, the way was being cleared for a contender on the Left. With the GOP splintered and in-fighting over the progress of their Middle East adventures, Barack Obama made his way to center stage. A black man with a skill for rhetoric and an aggressive, radical vision, he had the intelligence and acumen to galvanize his fellow blacks and comfort self-loathing whites who made his coalition.
From a vague past came the man who could have crushed the Republicans once and for all, Barack Obama. Every enemy got destroyed in his ascent before they could even give a fight, like his Senate opponent who had to drop out after his divorce case got leaked, giving Obama an easy victory against an intelligent but politically naive Alan Keyes. His senate seat was short lived, as the Democrats knew they had a star in their hands, and moved heaven and earth in the party to make way for his 2008 presidential bid.
It’s easy to forget the fervor of the 2008 presidential race against John McCain. The Obama Campaign was the first to use Social Media data to fine-tune policy details and possible weak points, also using it effectively to organize messaging. They had countless volunteers from a core base sick of war and the Bush presidency. The army of young people were an untiring, enduring force, giving countless hours of free labor on top of Obama’s impressive war chest.
The Republicans were stuck with a terrible nominee, a ruthless warmonger in a nation fatigued of unending conflict, a man so uncharismatic some openly wondered if he was intentionally trying to lose. The shellacking that culminated in November came as no surprise. Even worse for Republicans, the down-ticket races went so well Obama ascended to the White House with a filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate and control of the House. The Democrats had a motivated, hyper-competent staff, a messiah-like figure as President, and a clear mandate of the people. The country was primed for revolution.
Now, for those where this era was a distant memory, this might sound hyperbolic, especially since we know now how inconsequential his presidency ended up. For those who doubt what Obama was capable of, I will let one of Obama’s most vigorous enemies, Rush Limbaugh, convince you.
Now, let me speak about President Obama for just a second. President Obama is one of the most gifted politicians, one of the most gifted men that I have ever witnessed. He has extraordinary talents. He has communication skills that hardly anyone can surpass. No, seriously. No, no, I'm being very serious about this. It just breaks my heart that he does not use these extraordinary talents and gifts to motivate and inspire the American people to be the best they can be.
For those on the left, he was certainly motivating and inspiring. There seemed to be a halo around the man. His preacher-like tone and cadence alongside the iconic images of him printed with the subtitle “Hope” made him more a religious messiah than a political figure, and they weren’t wrong. He was the Black Messiah, come to wash away the sins of the nation. The same basic morality permeated both sides, the idea that finally the past could be reconciled, blacks could now feel like real Americans, and White Guilt regarding our past could be expunged. Even the man crushed in the presidential race seemed enamored by him.
A century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt's invitation of Booker T. Washington to visit — to dine at the White House — was taken as an outrage in many quarters. America today is a world away from the cruel and prideful bigotry of that time. There is no better evidence of this than the election of an African-American to the presidency of the United States. Let there be no reason now for any American to fail to cherish their citizenship in this, the greatest nation on Earth.
John McCain
Obama had conquered everyone. He had a mandate, both politically and morally, and an opposition that bowed to his majesty. The Democrats who elected him had full institutional conformity while the right was confused how to continue, many low-key wishing the new Democratic coalition success before their own party. The moral programming ran deep, and it likely would not take much to build an unstoppable juggernaut around his aura. Deep in the Republican’s hearts, they wondered whether Obama truly was the pinnacle of everything MLK wanted, and this was a time to put partisan ideologies behind them and hope for a new, rejuvenated nation. They doubted their own moral standing in the story.
And the ongoing -- this is why I think it's such a waste for a man as gifted as President Obama with the communications skills, you know he could wipe out the Republican Party. He can wipe out the Republican Party if he would inspire this country to be the best it could be, but we don't have to worry about that because that's not what he wants. He wants people in fear, angst and crisis, fearing the worst each and every day because that clears the decks for President Obama and his pals to come in with the answers, which are abject failures, historically shown and demonstrated.
Limbaugh’s 2009 CPAC Speech
While Rush didn’t like Obama, he saw how Republican leadership saw him. Obama’s opponents wanted nothing more than to be patted on the head by Black Jesus as they made their confessions and were promised forgiveness for past wrongs. A man like Obama only needed to make some pat phrases about how much he loved America, how the last few years changed his views of what the country was capable of, and other Reagan-esque pablum to assure his opponents that they were good people at heart. He needed magnanimity, reassurance of being happy to work with them for a better future. This didn’t happen.
He made a world tour visiting national leaders, distancing himself from the previous administration. The tone of the dialogues came across to the right as an extended “apology tour” where he more lamented the country than celebrated it. There was no confident aura, but more the cadence and tone of a weak, ineffectual man who desperately wanted to be liked.
He's doing just the opposite. And it's a shame. President Obama has the ability -- he has the ability to inspire excellence in people's pursuits. He has the ability to do all this, yet he pursues a path, seeks a path that punishes achievement, that punishes earners and punishes -- and he speaks negatively of the country. Ronald Reagan used to speak of a shining city on a hill. Barack Obama portrays America as a soup kitchen in some dark night in a corner of America that's very obscure. He's constantly telling the American people that bad times are ahead, worst times are ahead. And it's troubling, because this is the United States of America.
Limbaugh’s 2009 CPAC Speech
In his own party, he was surrounded by politically savvy, competent people who nonetheless were uncreative company men. After the disastrous bank bailouts implemented at the end of the last administration, one of the first orders of business was a massive stimulus package under the guise of facilitating economic growth from the 2008 financial crisis. As his base demanded blood from the big banks, his party was concerned with making sure the pigs got their slop in the trough. Obama, the transformative figure, quickly found himself paralyzed by risk-averse staffers giving only weak options.
One could talk of getting strung along with many other party priorities instead of his own the first year, but the event that likely sunk any capability to be a Left Wing Hero with real agency was his acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize. Obama hadn’t yet done anything remarkable, and getting the world’s most prestigious honor made even the most fanatical true believer shake his head. If Obama would have rejected the prize, emphasizing his work had not even begun and asking to be reconsidered at a later date, the respect from both sides would have been immense, giving an opening to direct his own mandate. As it was, he accepted the prize, and solidified himself as window dressing for guilty whites to point at and fawn over. Worse, he reneged on his anti-war stances at the behest of his cabinet, adding to the embarrassment of receiving the award.
At the same time, a loosely affiliated cluster of local organizations called The Tea Party was coalescing, threatening to take away his mandate in the Senate and House. In the battle for the Affordable Care Act, his original idea of a public option was shot down. As conflicts with his own party and the Republicans progressed, somehow the wrong-headed bill got continually worse. His senseless refusal to add a clause specifying that abortions would not be funded caused more meaningless clashes with Republicans, and the health insurers the bill was supposed to muzzle ended up getting a package that mandated health insurance. The bill plugged as the bane of Big Insurance became these mega-corporations’ wet dream.
Midterm elections came, and it was a bloodbath for the Democrats. Only two years into his administration, legislation became near impossible with an entrenched and uncompromising party in both the House and the Senate, determined to stymie the rest of his time in power.
After a full term, Obama was ineffectual as a leader, and I would argue winning re-election against Mitt Romney was the worst thing to ever happen to his career. If he had time in the wilderness to build alliances and politick behind the scenes, learning to control the gears of his own party to his own will like Trump did, he would have been able to come back with a vengeance four or eight years later. Winning re-election only kept him too visible in D.C. He was burdened by his presidential duties he had little control over instead of building a center of power in the shadows in preparation for another run, this time on his terms. It stands to reason the same thing would have happened to Trump if he won in 2020.
The most he managed to accomplish his second term was stymie any Republican who won the presidency by entrenching the bureaucracy and military with his people, ensuring ideological loyalty before competence or vision. As his last maneuver, he concocted the Russian collusion hoax in the Oval Office, and hamstrung Trump with countless investigations and traps. He learned how to trip up others well, learning by the ways he got thwarted himself. Then he left and was largely forgotten.
For those doing a post-mortem, there are lot of angles to investigate. It’s clear Obama’s rapid ascent into power was a liability. He was a community-organizer, a well-paid rabble-rouser before his senate bid that he easily attained. Most everything given to him made all political maneuvering seem easy. He had no experience with motivated, well-organized resistance. He also had no experience with the massive D.C. bureaucratic machine and how to maneuver the party and his opposition to get things done. His easy success made him unprepared.
Most of all, though, he was simply lazy. The reason he was incapable of being Carlyle’s Great Man wasn’t because he lacked intelligence, charisma, or even political savvy. The latter he lacked, but could have closed the gap with time. What he lacked most was SINCERITY. While he had a radical vision for a new country, he never actually loved the country he ruled.
"The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn't. But she's a typical white person who — if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know — there's a reaction that's been bred into our experiences that don't go away, and that sometimes come out in the wrong way, and that's just the nature of race in our society. We have to break through it. And what makes me optimistic is you see each generation feeling a little less like that."
Barack Obama
His remarks, even if meant to be positive and hopeful, always betrayed his feelings within, an animosity and deep resentment that no flashy ad campaign could wash away. He was a leader who didn’t love the people he lead, an American who saw little in the culture worth saving, and nothing in the masses he felt a connection to.
"And it's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Barack Obama
Even among the blacks he championed, there was that mild unease that he had, like deep inside he considered himself an imposter due to his white mother and life of general ease. He never lived in the ghetto, never had the dark experience of inner city schools and gang violence. He lived past the time of strong racial animosities and the civil rights revolution, totally detached from the experience of the typical black man in America, his most rabid supporters.
"My understanding, based on reports I'm getting from campaigns and communities, is that we have not yet seen the same kinds of energy and turnout in all quarters of our neighborhoods and communities as we saw when I was running. Now, I also want to say that that seems to be more pronounced with the brothers."
Barack Obama talking to young blacks
After his weak presidency, he found himself supporting the former Vice President in 2020, a person he had little love for, strung along again by a party that used him as a diversity display to rally the troops. At rallies he preached to dozens instead of thousands. By this time he was compensated well, his net worth estimated at 70 million that he somehow managed to amass during his relatively short public service. Even if humiliating, at least it paid well and kept him in the spotlight. In addition, he still tried to act a kingmaker in Democratic party politics, his most recent actions trying to prop up a struggling Harris presidential race.
Anyone who watched Obama at these rallies can see how much he’s aged, even more than the substantial aging he experienced as president. Where there was once a unique preacher’s confidence that could engage the crowd, his old act doesn’t have the same punch anymore. The man is visibly more frail, frustrated, and defeated. You can see it in his eyes.
I sometimes wonder what his thoughts were when the photograph above was taken. How it felt to fight a battle against a man he mocked, belittled, and seemed to defeat for good only to rise up again and destroy his proteges. I wonder if he though back at the White House Correspondents dinner where he roasted Trump, back at the dig he made that Trump would never be president. I wonder if he has a grudging respect for such an opponent who refused to back down, and now refuses to be made a weak tool of the administrative machine. It reminds me of a famous quote from Rocky II:
Duke: He's all wrong for us, baby. I saw you beat that man like I never saw no man get beat before, and the man kept coming after you. Now we don't need no man like that in our lives.
I wonder if he saw the potential he wasted from watching Trump, thinking to himself how that could have been him, how he could have been the one to shake up Washington D.C., how he could have been the one rallying tens of thousands of eager fans willing to go to jail for him. Now his time is sunsetting, as inconsequential as Carter, doomed to spend the remainder of his retirement contemplating what could have been. It’s a sad end, but sometimes you only get one shot.
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“I wonder if he saw the potential he wasted from watching Trump, thinking to himself how that could have been him…”
I seriously doubt it. He’s a narcissist. Likely blames everyone else for his shortcomings. Including his parents and grandparents. He did leave us shackled with his dream of government “health care”.
Obama had a mandate like few before him and squandered it. His freedom to operate was served up on a silver platter with a public good will that wanted nothing more than a final end to the corruption of the elites. What he really wanted was to serve the elites and reap his personal reward.
“I wonder if he saw the potential he wasted from watching Trump, thinking to himself how that could have been him…”
I seriously doubt it. He’s a narcissist. Likely blames everyone else for his shortcomings. Including his parents and grandparents. He did leave us shackled with his dream of government “health care”.
Obama had a mandate like few before him and squandered it. His freedom to operate was served up on a silver platter with a public good will that wanted nothing more than a final end to the corruption of the elites. What he really wanted was to serve the elites and reap his personal reward.