Mr.
Obama gave voice to this sentiment in a speech on Nov. 6 in Dallas:
"Sometimes I worry because everybody had such a fun experience in '08,
at least that's how it seemed in retrospect. And, 'yes we can,' and the
slogans and the posters, et cetera, sometimes I worry that people forget
change in this country has always been hard." It's a pity we can't stay
in that moment, says the redeemer: The fault lies in the country
itself—everywhere, that is, except in the magician's performance.
Forgive
the personal reference, but from the very beginning of Mr. Obama's
astonishing rise, I felt that I was witnessing something old and
familiar. My advantage owed nothing to any mastery of American political
history. I was guided by my immersion in the political history of the
Arab world and of a life studying Third World societies.
In
2008, seeing the Obama crowds in Portland, Denver and St. Louis spurred
memories of the spectacles that had attended the rise and fall of Arab
political pretenders. I had lived through the era of the Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul Nasser. He had emerged from a military cabal to become a demigod, immune
to judgment. His followers clung to him even as he led the Arabs to a
catastrophic military defeat in the Six Day War of 1967. He issued a
kind of apology for his performance. But his reign was never about
policies and performance. It was about political magic.
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