Did you feel the same thing, last Tuesday, as did Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum?:
"Rather faster than I would have expected -- sometime around the close of play last Wednesday -- I began to get a familiar creepy feeling: It was that old "Princess Diana is dead and the media coverage is too much" sensation. I'm not suggesting that the events of Nov. 4 remotely resembled those of August 1997. But I don't think I'm revealing much to astute readers if I do suggest that something else was mixed in with the legitimate rejoicing at a racial barrier being broken: a touch, just a touch, of the starry-eyed celebrity worship that, for not entirely rational reasons, attached itself to Princess Diana but not to Prince Charles; to John Paul II and not to Benedict XVI; to Barack Obama but not to Bill Clinton. Okay, more than a touch. Whatever it was that made teenage girls faint at the sight of Ringo and Paul at the height of Beatlemania also made adult men and women scream when Obama walked onstage in Chicago."
Yes. I felt that, too. Applebaum, if you read the rest of her piece, is determined to remain optimistic. Me, I'm not so sure I can be. It's not just that people in this country and around the world are bound to be disappointed when Obama turns out to be a flawed man, not a god or a hero, as surely he will. It's also that I worry there will be a great deal of anger and even a seeking of retribution against people who dare to point out Obama's mistakes; that there will be a reaction leading to a "shoot the messenger" mindset.
Conservatives maybe should start now reminding people of a simple fundamental: governments cannot establish the perfect kingdom here on earth. No government can do it; and that will apply to Barack Obama, too.
UPDATE: Interestingly, Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post has a related worry.
He notes that polls show that there are many issues that still divide American whites from African-Americans; and notes also that, at the same time, the same polls indicate that both whites and blacks expect an Obama presidency to be one of significant racial healing. It's probably putting too much on one man's plate.
