Head of State?

John McCain effectively stated the dark side of Obama's popular image in Orlando on Friday:

“If there’s one thing he always delivers, it’s a great speech,” McCain said. “But I hope you’ll listen carefully, because his ideas are not always as impressive as his rhetoric.”

We wonder just how McCain must feel, running against an opponent whose greatest "merits" are youth and good speaking ability.

In and of themselves, these are hardly solid qualifications for a US president, and they're a little more along the lines of what one would expect from some sort of promising revolutionary-turned autocrat (one minute, it's "change we can believe in," the next it's "change we will conform to for the good of the motherland," or something along those lines).

The fact is that Obama's image is not that of a politician at all. It is the image of a celebrity, who is expected to look good, speak well, and do little else. Obama's supporters seem to grow continually more enamored in the style of teenage semi-obsessed Hollywood heartthrob fans. With regard to the media, he gets the same divine status as the actor who donates some spare change to a charity or actually demonstrates the knowledge that the capital is in Washington, D.C. In short, Obama would make a fine head of state - just not much of a head of government.