Princess Barry

I’m bummed. Here I was, all ready to write a blog post about the reasons behind why the One’s personal popularity has remained high while the respective popularity of each of his proposals is in the toilet and Quinnipiac had to go and ruin it by releasing a new poll showing that his popularity in the bellwether state of Ohio has fallen below fifty percent [insert (sad face?) (happy face?) (ironic face?) here].

Ah, well. Even though it’s lost some of its immediacy, here is the germ of my theory:

McCain was even more right than he knew in calling BHO a celebrity candidate. Obama was elected not on the strength of the popularity of his proposals but solely on the strength of his personal popularity—not so much to be the country’s first Black president as to be its first celebrity president. (And before y’all go callin’ Reagan the first celebrity president, recall that he’d actually been elected to two terms as Governor of California before seeking the nomination for President. [Note to those who know me: You know I must think pretty lowly of the current President if I compare Reagan favorably to him—I harbored a personal grudge against Reagan for a long time; the current Administration’s micro-management of the AIG bonuses cured me of that, though.])

The electorate didn’t expect him to actually do any of the things he promised (or threatened)—they just expected him to sit there and smile prettily for the camera while reading from a teleprompter. But they got more than they expected—they forgot that, unlike Princess Diana, he’s actually in charge of setting policy; they forgot, too, that with a Democrat in the White House, there would be no restraint on the Democrat-led Congress. Let’s just hope we’re still able to vote by the time 2012 rolls around.