Shocked! Shocked!

Last spring, after beginning this post on “The Real Barack Obama?” by quoting E.J. Dionne’s observation —

The result of the 2008 election may come down to how voters decide to define Barack Obama. Is he Adlai Stevenson or John F. Kennedy?

— I continued:

Note well that this formulation of the central question of the election does not deign to ask who Obama really is, emphasizing instead that “almost all of the turns in this contest have been driven by how Obama presented himself and how voters perceived him.” (Emphasis added)

Since the operative question about Obama concerns presentation and perception rather than actual identity and character, I have a much better way to pose it than Dionne’s false alternative between Kennedy and Stevenson. Here’s how I put the question in an email to a good friend back in February:

What a fascinating show future president Obama is putting on! It will be even more fascinating to discover whether he is:

a) Jimmy Stewart, in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington;

b) Robert Redford, in The Candidate;

c) Peter Sellers (Chauncey Gardiner), in Being There; or

d) Laurence Harvey, in The Manchurian Candidate….

Now after the seemingly endless campaign and an already long “transition,” there have been so many things that everyone else long knew but that Obama, upon belatedly discovering them, feigned shock and surprise (that Bill Ayers is an unrepentant terrorist; that blocking legislation to require medical care for babies born accidentally after botched abortions would lead people to say he opposed medical care for babies born after botched abortions; that during his twenty years as an acolyte of Rev. Wright that the good reverend frequently laced his sermons with anti-white and anti-American diatribes; that his signature somehow appeared on a questionnaire on which he had said that he favored outlawing all handguns; that Tony Reszko and the cabal of Chicago pols with whom he made his peace did not distinguish politics from corruption; etc.), that I now believe he most closely resembles another movie archetype: Claude Rains (“Captain Renault”) in Casablanca:

Rick (Humphrey Bogart}: How can you close me up? On what grounds?

Captain Renault: I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!

[a croupier hands Renault a pile of money]

Croupier: Your winnings, sir.

Captain Renault: [sotto voce] Oh, thank you very much.

Captain Renault: [aloud] Everybody out at once!