Asks Richard Fernandez in his post The entropy devil:
Maybe this obsession with monumental tasks is to retrospectively justify the idea that we need this “extraordinary man”. It’s a curiously medieval concept. Democracies are different from aristocracies in that they assume that government requires no special people; no one anointed by Divine Right. The reason for that is that the history itself provides the surprises. God if you will, already blows through the grass with a restless spirit. We don’t need our own jumped up Locomotives of History. The sources of surprise are already there. What humanity often needs isn’t more vainglorious surprise but ordinary simplicity, clarity and focus. We don’t need someone to Feel the Force. All we need right now is someone with common sense.
Go read the rest, and follow the links.
Well, we do already have the airbrushed posters of the New American Man. I’m not worried until it leaks that white horses are being kept in a secret bunker for when the questioning from the press corps rises from hysterical adulation to mere fawning. Sir Obama du Lac Michigan.