His Next Job Can Be As A Faith Healer

“The Most Merciful Messiah, Lord Obama.”

-- Rush Limbaugh, referring to the kid, on Political Radar

"Obama, Shaman

The candidate’s post-masculine charisma tempts America in the age of Oprah.

In the patois of punditry, 'charismatic' has come to mean little more than 'like a rock star.' But the striking thing about the charismatic leader is the extent to which his followers regard him as a healer of wounds, an alleviator of pain. In this sense, surely, Senator Barack Obama is charismatic. The carefully knotted ties and the dark, conservatively tailored suits only accentuate the exoticness of his shamanism; he has entered the American psyche not as a hero but as a healer.'"

-- Michael Knox Beran, who is on to "one of the more pernicious political swindles: the belief that a charismatic leader can ordain a civic happy hour," in New York's excellent City Journal

Mr. Beran sagely adds:

"It is a sign of growing maturity in a people when, laying aside these beliefs, it acknowledges that suffering is an element of life that sympathetic magic cannot eradicate,..."