"No single specific threat . . ."

But Barack Obama is now receiving Secret Service protection, earlier than any other presidential candidate, ever.

He has received threats in the course of his campaign, and the large crowds he attracts arouse higher security concerns, a Secret Service spokesperson told ABC News.

Isn't charisma a lightning rod?  One of the topics Ann Althouse and I meant to discuss in our forthcoming Bloggingheads diavlog (a word I never thought would come trippingly off my tongue), but got distracted from by bras, purses, and prostitutes, was how the passion Obama has aroused reminds us of no one so much as, and no one since, Bobby Kennedy.  That was a passion she and I both shared -- she was 17, I was 22 when RFK was killed -- and that neither of us ever invested in a political candidate again.  (In fact I can't think of a Democratic candidate who's inspired it; Republicans seem to have felt that way about Ronald Reagan.  No, wait. I had my moments for Mario Cuomo.)  When we argued about Obama a year and a half ago, I was tempted to feel it again and Ann valued her skepticism more:  "I'm a fan of no politician."  By now, I think the adulation of Obama is way over the top.  No human being can live up to that kind of expectation; it may even bring out the worst in all concerned.

Which brings me to the point:  ever since 1968, whenever I have felt even a spark of that kind of enthusiasm for a politician, it has immediately been followed by a wave of dread that he (or she, in principle)  would be assassinated.  This is a learned response, you could say a conditioned reflex, burned in by the traumas of the '60s, beginning with JFK's assassination (I was 17 for that one) and taking away Martin and Malcolm as well as Jack and Bobby.  The emotional logic of it is:  love too much and you'll lose, or even destroy.  The more objective logic is that anyone who inspires that kind of adoration probably (therefore) attracts equally virulent and uncanny hate.  John Lennon did, and so did Reagan. 

It was, it seemed to me, the bridge-builders who were blown away in the '60s, which amounted to dynamiting the bridges:  the adults still young and vital enough to inspire the next generation; the pragmatists and dealers who hadn't lost all idealism, and the dreamers who relished getting their hands dirty.  Bobby Kennedy was the last politician who could appeal to college students, minorities, AND white blue-collar workers.  After him, the country was cleft along paradoxical class and racial lines, highly educated whites and minorities on one side, "middle America" on the other.  And so it remains.

To me, supporting the worldly Bobby instead of the patrician, elite Gene McCarthy, who was preferred by most of the publishing-industry types I worked among, was my first adult (and centrist!) political commitment.  There was a sense (which seemed solemnly true at the time, and was at least artful myth-making) that Bobby combined an ability to play political hardball with a real, born-again compassion for the less fortunate, growing out of a heart broken by his brother's death. 

Now The New Yorker has an article about Obama, who gets along well with white downstate farmers (by being pro-ethanol, mind you), aspiring to be just that kind of a uniter.   I haven't read the article (by Larissa MacFarquhar) yet, but the caption on the front-page photo says, "He has staked his candidacy on union -- on bringing together two halves of America that are profoundly divided."  And "by associating himself with Lincoln."  Let's not go there -- *eye roll* -- but of course Lincoln and union are historically inextricable.

Do we long that deeply for "a more perfect union," that we fall in love with anyone who seems to promise it?  What's up with that?  And what is there that loves a wall, and would kill to preserve it? 

"Symbol" comes from the Greek syn-bollein, which essentially means "to bring together."  "Devil" or "diabolical" comes from dia-bollein:  to put asunder, to tear apart.

You know what, I'm glad Obama is getting Secret Service protection. 'Cause I'm getting that Sixties chill.

(The terribly ironic postscript is that to be assassinated is the only way to live up to such impossible promise -- to be remembered as the redeemer so many people hoped you were.  Heck, you could even say that about J.C. himself . . . but let's not go there.) 

Comments

[Winston]

Agreed, The Big Chill effect is moving in. With at least a couple of Dem candidates who invoke so many emotions, pro and con, it may be inevitable that we see the fringe crazies surface.

That last ( ) paragraph is so true. Martyrdom is a punched to larger than life super-stardom, whether good, evil, political, entertainer, whatever. Would Marilyn Monroe or Elvis be as enduringly huge as they are if they had lived out their lives? Probably not. John and Bobby and Martin? For our generation, probably. Beyond, questionable.

It is scary to think that the best odds on accomplishing one's life work is achieved by shortening that life.

[Alison]

Re diavlog: It keeps registering to me as divalog. As in, you're a couple of divas swapping stories.

I keep thinking this level of Obama adoration can't be sustained. For months I've been waiting for his early, Chicago-based fans to get disgusted with the new, fair weather fans & create a backlash ... like when an indy rock group suddenly gets a top 40 single, and all the kids who saw them years ago in small-town college bars roll their eyes about the new followers & jump ship for the next up-and-coming underground outfit instead. But I guess it's hard to compare politics to indy rock.

[Melinda]

About that '60s chill...I've observed that those of us who grew up with assassinations (I was 9 for JFK and nearly 14 for RFK) were already cynical by the time we were in college. We didn't even fear that anyone we admired would be assassinated; we almost knew they would be.

It's probably why we embraced (although we did not create) the narcisism of the '70s. "Yeah, right, peace love and understanding. Just let me get my degree and get a cool job that lets me express the real inner me and to hell with your silly hippie causes. A job where everybody's like the newsroom on the Mary Tyler Moore Show."

It's not that we didn't secretly have causes outside of our egos, or that there was no activism among younger Boomers. The culture just didn't lend itself to it the way it did in the '60s.

Your cohort had "What Have They Done To The Rain." Ours had "What Have They Done To My Song, Ma."

[amba]

Alison: if you read that New Yorker article, you'd almost think the guy has BOTH a sense of destiny AND enough of a sense of humility to shrug off the outsize expectations and stay standing. He was evidently bred and raised by a collection of narcissists, and reacted against the hubristic tendency to try to take the world on alone.

Melinda: cynicism is good protection. In the case of Bobby Kennedy, I cannot say for sure that it's "better to have loved and lost" . . . because so much was lost. Of course, it would have been much more flawed and quotidian than we are free to imagine it. But it would be quite a different country, wouldn't it, if the adults who kept the energies of the young working "in the system," instead of spinning out into destructive radicalism, hadn't almost to a man been offed?