More than 200,000 Berliners and others crowded Tiergarten Park to watch presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Barack Obama what turned out to be a hum-drum of a speech on foreign affairs. More lined the streets to see his motorcade pass by.
The attendance figure provided by police was far lower than a prediction that a million Germans would turn out to listen to Obama, but it was certainly enough, nearly three times the crowd that came to hear him in Portland, Oreg. during the primary campaign.
The huge crowds and adoration given to the Illinois senator has led to a lot of head-scratching among those not caught up in the love-fest. Obama has reached what some called a messianic status among his supporters. I don't need to go through all the evidence here. It's all over the Internet. Heck, just turn on the network television news and you'll see all you need.
I, however, have never bought in to the Messiah label for Obama. It was close, but wasn't quite right. Here's where I landed: "Daddy." That's the term that describes Obama's hold over liberals in this country and in Europe more than anything. There he was Thursday, speaking in "The Fatherland" before a massive and rapturous audience.
Obama is Daddy.
The left deifies children even more than Christians, who every December celebrate the birth of a baby. Pat phrases like "it's all about the children," "we are the world, we are the children," "war hurts children and other living things," are familiar in the political and social lexicon.
People on the left -- and I'm talking about the committed far-left activists here, not you average liberals at home -- really do think of themselves as children and often act like children. The desire to act without restraint is childlike in nature. The unhinged hatred toward President Bush and Karl Rove rarely comes from adult behavior. The mind-numbing ability to despise all things Republican while calling conservatives mean-spirited can only come from someone who is immature. The need to have more and more government control over basic aspects of their lives from work to housing to health care, while trying to have it both ways by keeping government out of their bedrooms where they want to do whatever it is they want, consequences be damned.
The love being shown to Obama in Western Europe is no surprise. It's where slowly failing nanny-states are taking care of citizens cradle-to-grave. Consequences, like home-grown terrorism from immigrants (or children of immigrants) needed to keep the welfare state intact, be damned. With few exceptions, they're children across the Atlantic.
Obama is not only the most liberal presidential candidate in our nation's history, but he also has lectured his audiences several times now on the responsibilities that come with fatherhood. He's fully embraced the Daddy role. Now that he's got Democrats wrapped around his finger, he can take on the fatherly role of enforcement. He can whip them into shape and keep them in line. It's something that children need and crave.
So, while on the surface, it might seem like leftists here and abroad worship Obama in the same way that Christians exalt Jesus, to me it's more like they are orphans overjoyed to have finally found a father.
