A MODERN DAY ELMER GANTRY

The Messiah speaks:

Repeatedly invoking the Bible, President Obama yesterday told religious leaders that health-care critics are "bearing false witness" against his plan.

The fire-and-brimstone president declared holy war in a telephone call with thousands of religious leaders around the country as he sought to breathe life into his plan for a system overhaul.

Without naming anyone specifically in the 10-minute conference call, Obama said opponents had been spreading lies.

"I know that there's been a lot of misinformation in this debate and there are some folks out there who are, frankly, bearing false witness," Obama said.

"I need you to spread the facts and speak the truth."

He said the reforms aim to carry out one of God's commandments.

"I am my brother's keeper. I am my sister's keeper," Obama said.

He called health reform a "core ethical and moral obligation."

Victor Davis Hanson notes:

This contrived use of religiosity (e.g., “There are some folks out there who are frankly bearing false witness.”) has a Reverend Wright flavor of mixing politics and religion in cynical fashion to bolster Obama's fides as an authentic moral figure. And isn't the use of religion as a political tool precisely what Obama and others have objected to in the Christian Right?

...I think we are seeing a sort of presidential meltdown. As Obama's polls free-fall, and threaten wider political damage, it causes him a certain novel exasperation that for the first time in his life soaring hope-and-change rhetoric for some strange reason no longer substitutes for a detailed, logical, and honest agenda. The problem right now is not with un-Christian opponents, but dozens of congressional Democrats who simply do not wish to run on state-run medical care (as well as higher taxes, larger deficits, cap-and-trade, etc.), and no longer sense the president's popularity trumps the unpopularity of his agenda and gives them cover with the voters.

This false messiah is a modern day Elmer Gantry , with the same creepy charisma, malignant narcissism, and power-hungry instincts.

Personally, I find it a rather unique experience as a psychiatrist to observe Obama "on his way" to solidifying his divine moral credentials and his heavenly right to rule over us mere mortals.



UPDATE: OK, to be fair, Obama is not (as far as I know) a womanizer like Gantry was. But he shares the same seductive and narcissistic qualities that made Lewis' Gantry the ultimate religious hypocrite.

UPDATE II: Government as religion.