I was maybe excessively churlish about Barack Obama in this post. All things considered, I think an Obama candidacy (as opposed to a Clinton candidacy) would be a good thing. His positions on climate change and energy policy in particular strike me as among the best in the field, and that’s no small matter. I do wish we’d have gotten more specifics on foreign policy differences between the Democratic candidates, but from what little I’ve been able to glean, Obama’s foreign policy would be to the “left” of Hillary Clinton’s (though probably still much further to the “right” than I’d like).

Still, the thing that continues to bug me about Obama is the way people respond to him, as though he can personally “heal our divisions” or elevate us to a new level of virtue. This is not a role that the executive in a constitutional system governing free people ought to play. One of the besetting problems of our age is that the president is invested with entirely too much power and authority, as if he were the embodiment of a Rousseauean “general will.” I don’t think that Barack Obama would abuse executive power to the extent that George Bush has, but the habit of seeing the president as our “leader” (much less the leader of the world) can only encourage servility and make tyranny that much more likely.

UPDATE: Christopher has some good thoughts here: “[Obama] is preparing us to take up our responsibilities individually and communally to face the hard work at hand. Ironically, what some are worried about as a form of messianism, actually relocates the power to make change within each one and all of us.” That’s an important distinction, and it’s possible I’m misreading the Obama phenomenon. Still, it’s also a subtle distinction and one that can easily get lost in the enthusiasm for getting “our guy” elected.