the prince of peace

[All quotes and images taken from Is Barack Obama the Messiah?]

What They Say

Barack Obama dot com: "Just follow Barack's lead and be honest with them. You don't need to debate policy or discuss the day's headlines.

Donna Brazile: "Barack Obama is a metaphysical force in American politics."

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Chris Matthews: "I have to tell you, you know, it's part of reporting this case, this election, the feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama's speech. My, I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often. No, seriously. It's a dramatic event. He speaks about America in a way that has nothing to do with politics. It has to do with the feeling we have about our country. And that is an objective assessment."

"I’ve been following politics since I was about 5,” said Mr. Matthews. “I’ve never seen anything like this. This is bigger than Kennedy. [Obama] comes along, and he seems to have the answers. This is the New Testament. This is surprising."

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Ezra Klein: "Obama's finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don't even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair. ...Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves, to the place where America exists as a glittering ideal, and where we, its honored inhabitants, seem capable of achieving it, and thus of sharing in its meaning and transcendence..."

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Ken Burns: "As Abraham Lincoln experienced in his time, this nation is again at a crossroads. We again need a president who is above all authentic, who points us confidently toward that future, a leader with real character, like Obama, who calls upon each and every one of us to heed what his predecessor from Illinois called "the better angels of our nature" and not our basest fears. I am confident that Obama will be that kind of president. It is time for real change."

Gerald Campbel: "For his part, Obama has the capacity to summon heroic forces from the spiritual depths of ordinary citizens and to unleash therefrom a symphonic chorus of unique creative acts whose common purpose is to tame the soul and alleviate the great challenges facing mankind. ... Unlike other candidates, Obama is an inspired leader. He is authentic and truthful. He radiates truth and goodness. He possesses charisma and exercises sound judgment."

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Gary Hart: "He is not operating on the same plane as ordinary politicians, and this makes him seem elusive to the conventional press and the traditional politicians. His instinct for the moment and the times is orders of magnitude more powerful than the experience claimed by others. ... In an age of great transformation, experience of the past is worthless because it is a barrier to the breakthrough gesture...

"Some see Barack Obama as the long awaited champion finally come to slay the awful dragon of race. And they are right. Some see him as a new start for the Democratic Party and national politics. And they are right. Some see him as the walking embodiment of internationalism, ready to restore an honorable and respected place for America in the world. And they are right.

"I see Barack Obama as a leader for this transcendent moment, the agent of transformation in an age of revolution, as a figure uniquely qualified to open the door to the 21st century and to convert threat to great new opportunity."

Eve Konstantine: "Barack Obama is our collective representation of our purest hopes, our highest visions and our deepest knowings of who we are as a people, and as a country. We've surfaced him out of "the field" and charged him with the task of riding this wave on our behalf...

Obama has tapped into his own [Vibrational Intelligence]. He's listened to the unspoken, heard the unvoiced, and has responded to the yearning of our youth, our boomers, and the disenfranchised. He's our product out of the all-knowing quantum field of intelligence, of which we're all a part; and he's simultaneously speaking into that field."

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Bill Rush: "Barack's going to bring the whole unit-, unit- the whole nation together - NO MORE Red States, NO MORE Blue States, ONE NATION. ... He hasn't been a senator for that long. But you know he's coming in here, he's doing it because he wants to, but also because he feels like he's CHOSEN to do this. You know our nation right now needs something, needs some CHANGE, needs something to SHAKE THINGS UP...

“I think that Obama, his election to the Senate, was divinely ordered,” Mr. Rush said, all other explanations failing. “I’m a preacher and a pastor; I know that that was God’s plan. Obama has certain qualities that -- I think he is being used for some purpose. I really believe that."

Toni Morrison (to Obama): "...in addition to keen intelligence, integrity and a rare authenticity, you exhibit something that has nothing to do with age, experience, race or gender and something I don't see in other candidates. That something is a creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom.

When, I wondered, was the last time this country was guided by such a leader? Someone whose moral center was un-embargoed? Someone with courage instead of mere ambition? Someone who truly thinks of his country's citizens as "we," not "they"? Someone who understands what it will take to help America realize the virtues it fancies about itself, what it desperately needs to become in the world?

Our future is ripe, outrageously rich in its possibilities. Yet unleashing the glory of that future will require a difficult labor, and some may be so frightened of its birth they will refuse to abandon their nostalgia for the womb.

There have been a few prescient leaders in our past, but you are the man for this time.

George Packer: "At times, Obama almost seems to be trying to escape history, presenting himself as the conduit through which people’s yearnings for national transformation can be realized. [He] spoke for only twenty-five minutes and took no questions; he had figured out how to leave an audience at the peak of its emotion, craving more. As he was ending, I walked outside and found five hundred people standing on the sidewalk and the front steps of the opera house, listening to his last words in silence, as if news of victory in the Pacific were coming over the loudspeakers. Within minutes, I couldn’t recall a single thing that he had said, and the speech dissolved into pure feeling, which stayed with me for days."

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Michael Sietzman: "We finally have a candidate in Barack Obama who uses the word 'We' while others use 'I.' He empowers us with words and the authentic emotion behind them and people are rushing into the tent to drink that magic water. Candor, inclusiveness, poetry, and inspiration. We don't only deserve those things, we long for them. We want to be led and we want to be lifted and anyone who doesn't understand that simply doesn't understand us.

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Michelle Obama: "We have lost the understanding that in a democracy, we have a mutual obligation to one another -- that we cannot measure the greatness of our society by the strongest and richest of us, but we have to measure our greatness by the least of these. That we have to compromise and sacrifice for one another in order to get things done. That is why I am here, because Barack Obama is the ONLY person in this who understands that. That before we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation."

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Honestly, he gives me chills. -- Mural artist

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"It's almost like the Messiah, you know?" said [Jan] Young.... "People really, really want change, and you feel it. You don't just hear it -- you feel something coming from him."

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"Brenda Bladen was trying to explain why she liked Barack Obama so much—he was authentic, selfless, and inspirational. He was restoring her faith in politics. "I'm not comparing him to Jesus Christ but..." she said, before talking about the senator's humble beginnings..."

"He looked at me, and the look in his eyes was worth 1,000 words," said Mack, now a regional field organizer. Obama hugged her and whispered something in her ear – she was so thrilled she doesn't remember what it was.

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"He's very charismatic. It was a 'you-had-to-be-there' kind of experience," said Lolita Breckenridge... "Not too much of the speech was new to me," she admitted. "But hearing him live..." she trailed off, shaking her head and grinning. ...

[Obama] did not flinch when women screamed as he was in mid-sentence, and even broke off once to answer a female's cry of "I love you Obama!" with a reassuring: "I love you back."

"Black and white, and the youth; they appeared in a state close to rapture watching Obama speak. Here and there one could see women crying and some men wiping away tears too. ...

"It's not so much by what he says but it's the way the crowds respond to his words. When 16,000 people, without prompting, start shouting some of his keynote phrases as he delivers them, you know something special is going on.

"The atmosphere at his events is such that one wonders if Obama is about to walk out with a basket with some loaves and fishes to feed the thousands. ...

"People rushed forward screaming hysterically. ... “It was HIM!” she yelled. “But,” I questioned, “how do you know? All the windows were darkened.” She replied, “I felt it.”

"...He gave the same speech he gives everywhere. I paid no attention to him but watched the crowd.

"Those faces. It was raw, naked, complete, worship, love, heart-whole passionate stunned and almost unbelieving but desperately wanting to believe him adoration."

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Jody Klein of Centralia, Wash., about two hours-drive south of Seattle, was near tears as she recounted her Obama experience. At age 20, she'll vote in a presidential election for the first time.

"There's just this amazing excitement that's here," she said. "When he was talking about hope, it actually almost made me cry. Like it really made sense, like, for the first, like, whoa … how important a time this is for us. It was really exciting."

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"The rest of us, we were in this huge crowd outside in the rain and he came out in the rain and talked to us," said Keze, her voice still raw from cheering. "I was 10 feet away from him, 10 feet away," she repeated another two times in awe.

"The only time I felt like that was when I saw Pope John Paul II."

What He Says

When Morgan Freeman comes over to greet Obama, the senator begins bowing down both hands in worship. "This guy was president before I was," says Obama, referring to Freeman's turn in Deep Impact and, clearly, getting a little ahead of his own bio. Next, a nod to Bruce Almighty: "This guy was God before I was." (Okay, more than a little ahead.) But Freeman is eating it up. Leaning in, he tells the senator to win it. "I will," Obama replies. "That's why I'm running."

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“False hopes? There’s no such thing. This country was built on hope. We don’t need leaders to tell us what we can’t do—we need leaders to inspire us. Some are thinking about our constraints, and others are thinking about limitless possibility.”

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"My job is to be so persuasive that if there's anybody left out there who is still not sure whether they will vote, or is still not clear who they will vote for, that a light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany ... and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Obama."

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We are the hope of the future; the answer to the cynics who tell us ... that we cannot remake this world as it should be. Because we know what we have seen and what we believe -- that what began as a whisper has now swelled to a chorus that cannot be ignored; that will not be deterred; that will ring out across this land as a hymn that will heal this nation, repair this world, and make this time different than all the rest. Yes. We. Can."

Nothing worthwhile in this country has ever happened unless somebody, somewhere is willing to hope. Somebody is willing to stand up.

Somebody who is willing to stand up when they are told "No you can't" and instead they say, "Yes we can."

That's how this country was founded. A group of patriots... "Yes we can." That's how slaves and abolitionists...

That's how the greatest generation...

That's how pioneers ... they said, "Yes we can."

That's how immigrants traveled ... "Yes we can."

That's how women ... how workers ... how young people...

That's what hope is. That's what hope is.

That's what hope is, Madison.

That moment when we... When we... Because cynicism is a sorry sort of wisdom. When we instead join arm in arm and decide ... block by block, precinct by precinct, county by county, state by state. That's what hope is.

There's a moment in the life ... when that spirit... if we are to make our mark on history. And this is our moment. This is our time.

What I Say

I'm just worried about what he's doing to all our fine young white women.




J