Is it About the Future of the World?

From an article in the Times of London about Samantha Power:

She is also thrilled by the impact Obama is already having on world affairs: “I have a friend who just came back from Burma last week and said all that anybody is talking about on the streets of Rangoon is Barack Obama. What is incredible is how many constituencies he can appeal to, how many boundaries he can cross effortlessly – of race, of age, of geography and of religion.”

“Obamamania”, she believes, owes much to the building of a movement by dedicated supporters. “The only way we were going to win was to have organisers who were willing to freeze their asses off in rural Iowa when it seemed like there was going to be no political payoff. The corollary is that those who are helping Obama do so with quasi-evangel-ical fervour. I think Obama supporters, by and large, do not see this as mere politics. They see this as the future of the world."

It is interesting how the Obama movement, or as I like to call it, Obamianity, prefers to separate itself from politics, or at least to distance itself from politics as usual, from politics as merely politics. Obamianity is not about politics, but about the politics of hope, about what Obama has said many times as he has finished his rallies, "let's go change the world."

Obama seems to know that in American culture, politics is a very hard sell, and in order to get people involved he has had to radically change the usual political vocabulary. And yet some people are still not buying Obama's repackaged political product. My most vivid example of this is that I am the only one in my family who is even remotely interested in being an Obamian. My parents and my two older brothers and their families are not moved by the Obama movement either because their politics are radically different, or because politics for them is simply a distasteful dish never even to be imagined or consumed.

So obviously there are limits to Obama's charisma, to the way he can "bamboozle" people into becoming his followers. Will Obamianity be able to add more converts during the general election? Or will the already saved lose their faith as politics becomes its usual vulgar enterprise as we approach November?