Tidningskrönika, på mitt sätt

Ekots tidningskrönika citerade min lilla notering om Obamas tal i Berlin. Så här skrev jag:

... nog känns det skamlöst att en ung senator jämför sig med giganter som John F Kennedy och Ronald Reagan, bägge för övrigt notoriska kapprustare. Och sättet sedan. Vi måste riva ner murarna! Javisst, men hur då? Tillsammans, i detta ögonblick. Jaha.

Svenska strateger tindrar. Hoppas de inte lär sig för mycket. Jag vill inte höra att omvalet av Fredrik Reinfeldt innebär "det ögonblick då oceanerna slutade stiga och vår planet började helas", som Obama sa den 3 juni.

Men Melanie Phillips, Victor Davis Hanson och Charles Krauthammer säger det bättre, förstås. Eller Mark Steyn, som när det begav sig fyllde sin text med den sexuella/religiösa hänförelse som många tycks känna:

"I felt this thrill going up my leg," MSNBC's Chris Matthews said after one of the senator's speeches. "I mean, I don't have that too often." Au contraire, Chris and the rest of the gang seem to be getting the old tingle up the thigh hairs on a nightly basis. If Obama is political Viagra, the media is at that stage in the ad where the announcer warns: if leg tingles persist for more than six months, see your doctor.

Out there in the voting booths, however, Democrat legs stayed admirably unthrilled. The more the media told Hillary Clinton she was toast and she should get the hell out of it and let Obama romp to victory, the more Democrats insisted on voting for her.

The more the media insisted Obama was inevitable, the less inclined the voters were to get with the program. On the strength of Matthews's vibrating calves, Obama raised a tonne of money - more than $US300 million ($316 million) - and massively outspent Clinton, but he didn't really get any bang for his buck. In the end, he crawled over the finish line. The Obama Express came a-hurtlin' down the track at two miles an hour.

But what does he care? Obama has learned an old trick of Bill Clinton's: If you behave like a star, you'll get treated as one. So, even as his numbers weakened, his rhetoric soared. By the time he wrapped up his "victory" speech last week, the great gaseous uplift had his final paragraphs floating in delirious hallucination along the Milky Way: "I face this challenge with profound humility and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people. I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.

"This was the moment, this was the time, when we came together to remake this great nation."

It's a good thing he's facing it with "profound humility", isn't it? Because otherwise who knows what he'd be saying. But mark it in your calendars: June 3, 2008, the long-awaited day, after 232 years, that America began to provide care for the sick.

Just a small test program: 47 attendees of the Obama speech were taken to hospital and treated for nausea. Everyone else came away thrilled that the Obamessiah was going to heal the planet and reverse the rise of the oceans. When Obama wants to walk on the water, he doesn't want to have to use a stepladder to get up on it.

There are generally two reactions to this kind of policy proposal.

The first was exemplified by The Atlantic Monthly's Marc Ambinder: "What a different emotional register from John McCain's; Obama seems on the verge of tears; the enormous crowd in the Xcel Centre seems ready to lift Obama on its shoulders; the much smaller audience for McCain's speech interrupted his remarks with stilted cheers."

The second reaction boils down to: "'Heal the planet'? Is this guy nuts?" To be honest, I prefer a republic whose citizenry can muster no greater enthusiasm for their candidate than "stilted cheers" to one in which the crowd wants to hoist the nominee on to their shoulders for promising to lower ocean levels within his first term.

Uppdatering:

Gerard Baker i The Times är underbar.

And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness.

The Child was blessed in looks and intellect. Scion of a simple family, offspring of a miraculous union, grandson of a typical white person and an African peasant. And yea, as he grew, the Child walked in the path of righteousness, with only the occasional detour into the odd weed and a little blow.

When he was twelve years old, they found him in the temple in the City of Chicago, arguing the finer points of community organisation with the Prophet Jeremiah and the Elders. And the Elders were astonished at what they heard and said among themselves: “Verily, who is this Child that he opens our hearts and minds to the audacity of hope?”

In the great Battles of Caucus and Primary he smote the conniving Hillary, wife of the deposed King Bill the Priapic and their barbarian hordes of Working Class Whites.

And so it was, in the fullness of time, before the harvest month of the appointed year, the Child ventured forth - for the first time - to bring the light unto all the world.

He travelled fleet of foot and light of camel, with a small retinue that consisted only of his loyal disciples from the tribe of the Media. He ventured first to the land of the Hindu Kush, where the Taleban had harboured the viper of al-Qaeda in their bosom, raining terror on all the world.

And the Child spake and the tribes of Nato immediately loosed the Caveats that had previously bound them. And in the great battle that ensued the forces of the light were triumphant. For as long as the Child stood with his arms raised aloft, the enemy suffered great blows and the threat of terror was no more.

From there he went forth to Mesopotamia where he was received by the great ruler al-Maliki, and al-Maliki spake unto him and blessed his Sixteen Month Troop Withdrawal Plan even as the imperial warrior Petraeus tried to destroy it.

And lo, in Mesopotamia, a miracle occurred. Even though the Great Surge of Armour that the evil Bush had ordered had been a terrible mistake, a waste of vital military resources and doomed to end in disaster, the Child's very presence suddenly brought forth a great victory for the forces of the light.

And the Persians, who saw all this and were greatly fearful, longed to speak with the Child and saw that the Child was the bringer of peace. At the mention of his name they quickly laid aside their intrigues and beat their uranium swords into civil nuclear energy ploughshares.

From there the Child went up to the city of Jerusalem, and entered through the gate seated on an ass. The crowds of network anchors who had followed him from afar cheered “Hosanna” and waved great palm fronds and strewed them at his feet.