Monday, November 10, 2008
A National "Obama Day"?
It sounds ludicrous -- getting elected President is, by far, the biggest thing the man has ever accomplished. But according to the Topeka City Journal, we shouldn't even wait for the man to be inaugurated (and, you know, actually do something):
The contact information makes it less of a news article and more of an unpaid commercial announcement, in my opinion. But we've seen a lot of that lately.Plans are being made to promote a national holiday for Barack Obama, who will become the nation's 44th president when he takes the oath of office Jan. 20.
"Yes We Can" planning rallies will be at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. every Tuesday at the downtown McDonald's restaurant, 1100 Kansas Ave., until Jan. 13. The goals are to secure a national holiday in Obama's honor, to organize celebrations around his inauguration and to celebrate the 200th birthday of President Abraham Lincoln, who was born on Feb. 12 1809.
At 7:30 a.m. on Inauguration Day, Obama Cake will be served at the downtown McDonald's, and a celebration is scheduled for 8 p.m. to midnight Jan. 20 at the Ramada Hotel and Convention Center, 420 S.E. 6th.
For more information, contact Sonny Scroggins, (785) 232-3761, 845-6148 or at biasbustersofkansas@yahoo.com; Lamont Lassiter, McDonald's general manager, 608-2739; Ava Chander-Beard, (785) 234-9138, ava.beard@sbcglobal.net; or Rhoda Carr, (785) 220-5883.
I'm tempted to ridicule this... but I don't think it's necessary. The fact that this movement is rallying at the local McDonald's speaks for itself.
The cult of personality surrounding President-elect Obama is a bubble, much like the sub-prime housing loan bubble, or the Internet profits-are-obsolete bubble. And, as we know, bubbles inflate to absurd proportions until they collapse; and few are interested in anticipating the collapse and planning for it, because the ride on the bubble is so much fun... while it lasts.
The Obama Bubble will collapse, too -- not today, certainly, and probably not before his inauguration. If I had to guess, I'd say it will happen well before the midterm elections of 2010. But sometime soon, the people who earnestly believe that Barack Obama can walk on water and will solve all their problems -- well, they're going to be bitterly disappointed.
It's no secret that the man is a Chicago politician, who deviates from business-as-usual Chicago politics only in being more ruthless than usual about getting elected. Nor is it a secret that the man has, as yet, hardly accomplished anything significant in his life, other than winning elections; doing the job he was actually elected to do has, for the most part, eluded him.
Not that this matters much now. If President-elect Obama can move forward boldly for the good of America, I'll take my hat off to him; I might even say someday, as I did in 2001 for President Bush, that I regret not voting for him... if his performance as President earns that respect.
But if he continues to be the hack politician he has thus far been, then a lot of people are going to be very, very disappointed in him.
