When the Princess of Wales died beside her Egyptian lover in a car crash in Paris 11 years ago, Britain erupted with demonstrations of bizarre and desperate grief.
Huge mawkish heaps of teddy bears suffocated the gates of Buckingham Palace; floral bouquets smothered the surface of a little island at the princess’s family home.
Stiff upper lips wobbled as, with a great bawling the British populace collapsed in orgiastic mourning for the beautiful, lost “people’s princess.”
Not everyone joined in. The more contained, traditionally stoic types walked bewildered amongst their ululating countrymen. The Royal Family was denounced for its unfeeling continence, its inability to engage in the American-style displays of naked emotion that the British people suddenly seemed to expect.
That was the great weirdness of Diana’s departure: Subtle alterations had been taking place for many years in the British people, a great softening had been at work. Yet no one realized quite how dead Edwardian Britain was — or Churchillian Britain, for that matter — until Diana herself died.
Then, the weeping multitudes laying handwritten poems at makeshift shrines could not be mistaken any longer for those doughty survivors of the London Blitz. That old Britain was gone.
That’s what it’s starting to feel like, here in America.
The ascension of Barack Obama has laid bare the stunning extent of our own softening, the distance we’ve traveled from the people we once were.
Americans are responding to Obama not as though he is a political aspirant for an executive post that was once George Washington’s, but as a bringer of light and healing, as a kind of secular savior.
To facilitate this reverence, or perhaps because he can’t help it, the Illinois lawgiver forever tilts his jaw upwards, as if he’s tuning into frequencies from Mount Olympus.
We’ve had celebrities singing, indie-pop style, in praise of Obama. We’ve had black schoolboys marching, fascist style, in praise of Obama. We’ve had fresh-faced children singing and chanting, kumbaya-style, in praise of Obama.
And now, to the strains of a song to Jesus, you are asked to “Prepare your heart to fill with hope.” Thus saith a new campaign entitled “ManifestBarack.org,” which is urging us all, via YouTube, to spend a moment every day concentrating fiercely on making Obama’s potential victory a reality.
“Your vision is a sacred trust…You are the sanctuary…of a sacred vision…for a renewed America.” In between each phrase, smiling Americans say, “President Barack Obama,” as if he already is. They are Manifesting him. “Say it…Feel it…” we’re told, “Believe it.”
The vast rallies, the fainting, the tingling up journalists’ legs – it’s all very exciting but as the election approaches it is looking more than ever like mass hysteria.
It’s not a question of wanting one’s guy to win, it’s Believing. Obama doesn’t have a set of policy proposals, he has a sacred vision – and you are its sanctuary!
Eleven years ago, 10 days after Diana expired, while Britain was convulsed with hitherto unexpressed emotion, the editors of National Review warned: “Personal charisma is a force that undermines institutions as often as it sustains them.”
Not surprisingly, those editors were amongst the few starchy, tearless onlookers. Their insights then have unnerving resonance now, as our own country is half-convulsed by freakishly unprecedented political sentiments.
“Mass emotionalism and febrile celebrity-worship are hostile to any long-standing constitutional system, which, with the passage of time, is bound to seem stuffy as well as solid, remote as well as impressive, and archaic as well as historical,” the editors wrote.
“We must hope then, that the unhealthy emotions of the last ten days in both London and the American media are something we will look back on with embarrassment and shame – as if we had been gorging on melodrama.”
Oh, we will all be gorging on melodrama, whether the god Obama wins or loses.
Not everyone is joining in – certainly not Joe the Plumber – but like Diana-adoring Britons, Obama-loving Americans have shrugged off the old bounds of what is politically seemly.
Their emotional video paeans, quasi-religious songs, and ranks of chanting schoolchildren reveal just how far many Americans have traveled from the white-wigged temperance of our republic’s Founders.
Examiner columnist Meghan Cox Gurdon is a former foreign correspondent and a regular contributor to the books pages of The Wall Street Journal. Her Examiner column appears on Thursdays.
