When non-Americans can corner an American abroad, they more often than not end up following this line of questioning: "I can understand, in some way, how you guys elected Bush the first time---avoiding, for now, a discussion about what we mean by 'elected'---but how in the name of the sweet baby Jesus did you guys elect him a second time?" The short answer is: Americans care about policy issues---just not when they're actually voting. They'll be happy to answer poll questions that show concern for the poor or support for national health insurance or resistance to war, but that all falls by the wayside when they choose their leaders. The choice is primarily made based on a gut feeling, on intuition, on liking the cut of a guy's (or girl's) jib. America is certainly not alone here, but, when Zimbabwe has Mugabe for 28 years, it doesn't affect many people outside of Zimbabwe; when the most powerful nation in the world elects Bozo and his coterie of circus clowns twice, it's just a touch more noticeable. Which brings us to the election of 2008 and the cult of Obama. You see, even liberal Americans are not really aware of what actually drives votes, which allows them to be trapped by the phenomenon themselves. Liberals, left-wingers and so on are swarming in droves to support Barack Obama---even though he's not really left-wing or even very liberal. Democrats think he talks real nice, which is the same thing Republicans thought of Bush. In effect, Obama's appeal for the left is just as mysterious as Bush's appeal for the right was. People voted for Bush because they believed him when he said he would lower taxes (done), take care of America (nope) and not be the world's policemen (again, no). He wasn't going to leave any children behind; he was the education president. It all sounded wonderful to conservatives and patriots alike. So that's how Bush got elected; a groundswell of popular support from people who---hard as it is to believe for those of us who can't find a nice thing to say about him---really liked him. Just flat-out liked the guy. Liked how he talked and how he made fun of all the same things they thought should be mocked. How he mocked intellectuals and highbrow thinking. Sure, he went to Harvard and Yale, but he almost flunked both times! Folks were happy to let cognitive dissonance smooth the wrinkles in their troubled brows. They didn't really listen to what he said about policy---most of which he never got around to anyway. So, in typical fashion (for an American election anyway), the few people that actually bothered to go out and vote chose the guy they liked the best---and to hell with whether or not his stated objectives lined up with most of their own. And, even when they thought about issues, they allowed little ones like abortion rights to overshadow big ones, like tax breaks for the filthy rich (even though 95% of the people voting weren't filthy rich themselves---and mysteriously, still aren't after eight years with Bush as president). To recap: <ul> Republicans voted for Bush because they really liked him; they liked how he talked and thought he was an open, honest and genuinely nice guy. Bush made a lot of interesting-sounding promises (for his base anyway) that he not only never fulfilled, he never even thought about them again once he got elected. Republicans ignored the major holes in Bush's policy during the campaign because they figured he was just saying that stuff to get elected, after which his views would magically align 100% with their own. </ul> Obama is drawing the same kind of fawning, unthinking, uncritical adulation, but with other promises. His most ardent supporters have thrown their cynicism to the wayside and tossed rational justification to the wind. Those things are for non-believers, for those who just don't get it. For example, A normally very liberal, yoga-practicing, vodka-swilling and tantra-practicing San Fransiscan wrote this the other day: <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/04/04/notes040408.DTL&feed=rss.mmorford" source="SF Gate" author="Mark Morford" title="The very best thing about Barack Obama No, not that. Or that or that or that. It's that other thing, deeper, crazier, intuitive">The very best thing about Barack Obama</a>. Let him speak for himself: <bq>See, this is what I hear most from relatives and readers and friends and newborn activists who were never activists before: Obama speaks to the intuition. It's about the sixth sense. It's not just what he says or how he behaves in the debates or the policy wonking [...] It's this: People feel it. They hear an Obama speech or read the articles or talk to like-minded folk, and they squint their eyes and weigh everything and then dismiss all that surface crap and get that look on their face that says, you know what? This guy gets it. He feels right. It's not a trick of light. It's not complete bulls—. It's not the usual spin and manipulation and fakery.</bq> Didn't Tom Cruise just release a video like this a couple of months ago?<fn> The article continues with a listing of typical repudiations put forth by cynics (read: people who don't have the "intuition" to "get" what Obama's all about) and then rejects them with <iq>[w]hatever. I'm not buying it. At least, not yet. For the moment, I trust the collective intuition.</iq> Yay for him and his capitulation of critical thought. It's incredibly seductive in such a long campaign to just give up and choose someone and wave their flag without a care in the world. It must be nice to feel positive about something in this campaign---to just turn off the brain and succumb to the nice feelings engendered by a candidate's soothing, dulcet tones. Just don't think you're special. Hillary supporters feel exactly the same way, as do McCain supporters. As did Bush supporters. Every time you see an ardent supporter of another candidate than your precious, precious candidate and think "God. How can they be so naive?", take a long, hard look in the mirror. Electing someone because he or she feels right---regardless of whether they voted for war funding every time, or voted for the Patriot Act or would increase the size of the military or would <i>invade Pakistan without their permission</i> or would not quite get everyone out of Iraq or would only insure about 30% of the uninsured in America---is a grand tradition, but don't confuse it with actually thinking.<fn> If you think about it and listen to their words and compare your opinions with a candidate's and then, viewing the gaping differences with horror, just say "F%@k it" and vote for that person anyway, you're not being a responsible citizen: you're infatuated. This is ok if you're buying a band's fourth album even though you don't really like any of the singles they released off of it. It's ok for choosing a one-night stand. But it's exceedingly irresponsible when choosing leaders with the kind of power that the US Congress and the American president wield. As has been so harshly proven to us again and again over the years---most recently with Mr. Bush and Co.---if you actually agree with Obama's policies, then vote for him. But if you find yourself reformulating his policies for him---on the fly, as it were---in order to make yourself feel that he stands for what you believe in, then knock it off. And stop embarrassing yourselves in discussions with people who actually bother to learn Obama's policies and haven't lost their minds. <hr> <ft>The author is facetiously referring to the ten-minute video of Tom Cruise "explaining" Scientology that was released a few months ago in order to hammer the point home that many Obama supporters are cultists rather than voters. The author is not <i>trying</i> to be subtle.</ft> <ft>All of the issues mentioned are actual planks in Mr. Obama's platform. The information comes from statements he has made and <i>not</i> repudiated. For most of the ones with a more military flavor, he has written at length about his support for them in less public-friendly magazines like the <i>Foreign Policy Journal</i>.</ft>