By now, everyone has seen the footage of that Obama-supporting Texas state senator freezing before Chris Matthews’ demand that he name a single Obama legislative accomplishment. The left has chosen two reactions to deal with this latest embarrassment. The first has been to dismiss Mathews as a gaseous windbag. The second has been to document Obama’s list of senate achievements. As for the first defense, I won’t attempt to debate the irrefutable. As regards the second area of argument, it’s a different story. Barack Obama indeed has had a relatively splashy first few years in the senate. One of Andrew Sullivan’s guest-bloggers has painstakingly compiled a list of Obama’s greatest senate hits that makes you wonder how the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body ever got along before Obama arrived. But the proper takeaway from last night’s interview with the Texas legislator isn’t that this individual’s lack of facility with Obama’s legislative legerdemain means Obama has never gotten anything done. What it does mean is that Obama’s supporters, even the ones who get to serve as his surrogates on national network broadcasts, don’t support him because of these “accomplishments.” More often than not, they don’t even know about these accomplishments. They support him as members in good standing of the cult of personality that has developed around the Obama campaign. Would it be fair to say this characterizes many or even most Obama supporters? Well, let’s put it this way: At the next Obama rally, it would be interesting to find out how many of the fainting and crying masses are there because they admire their hero’s work on the Lugar-Obama Initiative.
