Just A Little Bit Of History Repeating

Another factor in my feelings about Obama--I've been around the block a few times. I'm just barely outside the demographic that loves the guy, and that makes me old enough to have fallen for it last time, when the charismatic young candidate was a white guy from Arkansas. I was totally smitten, and I started calling myself a New Democrat, and I campaigned for him, and I hung on his every word. And then he was elected, and while he was still the best president I'd ever had in my life, somehow things weren't quite as I'd envisioned them. Eight years later, the party was in such bad shape it allowed George Bush to outsmart it, and the strategy didn't look all that bright anymore.

A terrific candidate ain't bupkis, since we have to win before we can actually do anything else. But it seems to me that people are again being taken in by a cult of personality, and it's ironic that it's at Hillary's expense--she's the one actually explaining how she'd get things done.