Guest Post by Steven Cohen
While historians continue to be divided among the factual and the apocryphal, at the conclusion of the American Revolution, so the legend goes, George Washington was confronted by a movement within the Continental Army to declare him king. According to the story, a major proponent of the plan was Col. Lewis Nicola, a Frenchman who had fought under Washington alongside the colonists. The proposal was supported by a group of influential Army officers who evidently had little understanding of the man who had just led them to victory.
When Nicola put forth the idea for Washington’s consideration, he received an immediate response laced with scorn and revulsion: "Let me conjure you then, if you have any regard for your country, concern for yourself or for posterity, or respect for me, to banish these thoughts from your mind and never communicate, as from yourself or any one else, a sentiment of like nature."
Thus did the nation’s most revered Founding Father set the country on a democratic course that would explicitly reject the cult of personality. The ensuing centuries would produce dozens of American statesmen and scoundrels with unique qualities and defects that would capture the country’s attention and occasionally even its collective imagination, from presidents like Jackson, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, JFK and Reagan, to demagogues like Huey Long and Joseph McCarthy. But unlike Argentina’s enthrallment with Juan and Eva Peron as well as numerous other examples in South America, Europe and the Far East, America has never succumbed to the cult of personality by surrendering its liberties to any movement based on a pledge of unquestioned devotion and loyalty to the will of a single individual.
Perhaps for the first time in our history since Washington, the nation’s present leader has come to power through the cult of personality, except this time he appears to welcome and encourage the movement surrounding him rather than reject it, as Washington did, in the interests of democracy. Barack Obama ran a campaign largely based on personal charisma as well as the promise of "change." As with most personality cults, he found a receptive audience among a restive electorate generally dissatisfied, if not disgusted, with the outgoing administration on many counts, including already out-of-control government spending and two wars that appeared to be going nowhere. The economy had already begun to crumble under the weight of a growing financial crisis. These were nearly perfect conditions for candidate Obama to seemingly parachute into the fray out of nowhere, armed with a studied "cool" demeanor, a genuine gift for eloquence, and a powerful ally in the news media that followed him with an unprecedented fawning obsequiousness that gave him a free pass on crucial issues such as legislative experience, personal judgment, and character.
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