"THE ONE" PREPARES

Posted at 7:52 a.m. ET

The news today (see our "snippets" page) that Barack Obama will use the same Bible at his inauguration that Lincoln used at his first - something no other president has dared to do - reminds us that Obama is being draped in greatness even before he sits at the presidential desk. 

Bret Stephens of The Wall Street Journal has noticed.  He points out that Obama has been anointed "person of the year" by Time, which describes The One in almost religious terms:

"His genome is global, his mind is innovative, his world is networked, and his spirit is democratic," gushes Time magazine's David Von Drehle in his "Person of the Year" profile of Mr. Obama. Time betrays its parochialism by almost invariably choosing the American president-elect for the honor every fourth or eighth year. But although the selection of Mr. Obama was predictable, Time's choice for a cover is instructive. The Che Guevara-esque, eyes-to-the-far-distance portrait by "street artist" Shepard Fairey is a throwback to the magazine's earliest days, when hero worship was considered an honest form of journalism.

But it was a bit more cautious then:

Still, there's a difference. Charles Lindbergh was 1927's Man of the Year only after he had flown across the Atlantic. The man preceded the myth (even if the myth did not survive the man). Abraham Lincoln became a patron saint to all kinds of political movements and social causes not necessarily his own, but only after April 15, 1865. The cult of George Washington was well advanced by the time of his death in 1799. But it was a peculiar republican cult that grew in proportion to its object's disdain for it.

No caution with Obama:

With Mr. Obama, by contrast, the myth precedes the man. Time's profile waxes long about the president-elect's "simple competence" -- the central evidence for which was the skill with which he and his advisers ran their campaign and the transition process. But if getting oneself elected president can predict executive competence, what do Time's editors now make of their choice of Mr. Carter in 1976, or of George W. Bush in 2004?

Maybe we should just build the monument now.  But who will it honor?

There's a case to be made that even if Mr. Obama turns out to be a mediocre or bad president, the very symbolism of his election is a historic achievement unto itself, a reflected monument to America, its promise, and every prejudice it has overcome. In this account, Mr. Obama is merely the guy who walked through weighty doors opened by others.

But that wouldn't be a monument for Mr. Obama. That monument will be to a presidency we already know will be great, because its greatness rests fundamentally on how it makes us feel about ourselves -- intelligent, broad-minded, good-hearted -- and bears only an abstract relation to whatever objective results it might achieve. It is a monument to a cult of personality in the making, a personality that will bear the name of Barack Obama but whose central character is -- who else? -- you. Imagine an interior space, with lots of mirrors, and you've got the basic design.

Well said.  Give Mr. Obama a chance, but no greater chance than any other president.  The stakes are too high.

December 23, 2008.