Discriminations

In a post yesterday (Is Obama “Everything”?) I referred to the sense in which Democrats do seem to regard Obama as The Messiah, as in “the Alpha and the Omega” from Revelation 22:13. (Otherwise how could they argue that Republican opposition to their 2700 page health care bill means they oppose “everything”?)

Now comes a leading acolyte in the Church of Obama, Evan Thomas of Newsweek, to commit what can only be described as sacrilege. Thomas, you will recall (but if not I’m about to remind you) confessed his faith to the world when he commented on MSNBC (where else?) last June, after Obama’s speech in Cairo, that

I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above — above the world, he’s sort of God.

Now, however, High Priest Thomas thinks God is suffering from a truth deficit. In the February 15 issue of Newsweek, Reverend Thomas writes, no doubt more in sorrow than in anger, that God

[t]he president needs to tell the truth on taxes, entitlements, and how to really reform health care — before it's too late....

[H]e has flirted with the truth, but then shied away from embracing it....

Father Thomas sets a sacramental tone in the first sentence of his piece: “It has long been an unwritten rule of political professionals: “Thou Shalt Not Demand Sacrifice of the Voters.” But now, according to Acolyte Thomas, sacrifices are needed, and on occasion he has seen glimpses of deliverance in his deity.

Obama has some of the qualities of a stern preacher. To his critics he can even seem a bit of a scold, self-involved, and above it all. In his Inaugural Address, he echoed Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians, telling Americans the time had come to “put away childish things.” In his first address to Congress a month later, he inveighed against piling up debt: “We have lived through an era where too often short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election…All the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time or some other day. Well, that day of reckoning has arrived, and the time to take charge of our future is here.”

Fine words, but so far the waters have not parted — nor, for that matter, has “the rise of the oceans beg[u]n to slow, and our planet beg[u]n to heal,” as The Messiah predicted on the night of his clinching the nomination of the party of the faithful.

“Bold words,” writes Friar Thomas,

but the speech was notably lacking in specifics. When the time came to tackle the hardest reform — health care — he waffled. He proposed universal, or nearly universal, health care, extending insurance or benefits to as many as another 30 million Americans. At the same time, he told Americans who have insurance and like it that "nothing will change." He promised that health-care reform would not add to the federal deficit.

It's possible to have universal health care, to have high-quality health care, to have the freedom to choose your own doctor, and to save money on health care, but it is not possible to do all those things at once. You don't have to be a policy expert to know that Obama and Congress were not going to be able to deliver on his promise. The public right away sensed that the president wasn't leveling with them...

The flock, once again, sensed danger and dissembling before the shepherds.

Regarding rising health care costs, Msgr. Thomas asserts that “the first step is to be honest about it,” but to date God has not taken that step.

America needs to spend a smaller percentage of its health dollars on patients in the last six months of life. This does not mean “death panels” voting to throw Granny in the snow. But it does mean more hospice care at the end of life rather than taking “extraordinary measures” that are routine in so many hospitals. Obama has tried to slide around this uncomfortable truth, talking of “waste and inefficiency” and somewhat vaguely proposing a half-trillion-dollar cut in Medicare spending in future years. But he has not begun to have a frank discussion of what that means or requires.

So, none of those 29 or whatever presidential speeches on health care have been “frank”?

But wait; there’s more. “He has been similarly dodgy about the economy.” So, what does He need to do? “He needs to be completely honest about the costs” of needed sacrifices and reforms. Voters are fickle, Bishop Thomas allows, but “they just might appreciate a politician who skips the slogans and tells them the truth.”

The Church of Obama and His Democratic disciples, in short, have put in a pretty poor performance so far, and they are now in danger of facing a Reformation every bit as threatening to their dominance as the one led by Martin Luther against an earlier Church. (On this theme, see Glenn Reynolds’s Tea parties are a new Great Awakening.)

Thomas’s Obama-As-God comment was made on Chris Matthew’s Hard Ball. If a true believer like Thomas really is beginning to doubt his faith, how much longer will Matthews keep feeling “this thrill going up my leg” when he hears Obama speak?