Weigel on the utopian buzz about Obama

A brief but poignant excerpt from George Weigel's essay in the most recent issue of First Things...

Referring to some of the excessive, premature praise that Obama has received, Weigel writes:

Some of this is funny. But, coupled with the “Yes, We Can” rhetoric of the campaign, it is also deeply troubling....the secular millenarianism—the tacit acceptance of the redemption of a fallen world through politics—that pervaded the Obama campaign was a perfect example of the kind of utopianism that Niebuhr...spent the better part of three decades warning against. “Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems”—that is Reinhold Niebuhr, not the Obama campaign. As for Niebuhr’s famous prayer—“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference”—well, if we are the change we’ve been waiting for, and “Yes, We Can” is our creed, then Niebuhr’s plea for humility, bravery, and prudence is a non sequitur, for there is nothing we cannot change.

Many members of the commentariat found the faces at Invesco Field (where Obama accepted the Democratic nomination) and in Grant Park inspiring. I must confess that I found them a little frightening. At the least, the extraordinary expectations Obama has raised are bound to be unmet—for there are wrenchingly difficult, and in some cases insoluble, problems in both domestic and international politics, and the realization of that in the cold light of reality is bound to produce disappointment, even bitterness...

Conspiracy theories about reactionaries standing in the way of progress will follow, as surely as night ­follows day. But that is to leave the matter at the level of politics. The real question raised by the chiliasm of the Obama campaign is the question of American public culture. Americans once prided themselves on a ­combination of self-reliance and realism. Yet a considerable number have now accepted a governmental role in their daily lives that would have been inconceivable to their grandparents—and many seem eager for more.

As for realism, does the uncritical acceptance of the politics of redemption suggest a national disconnect from some hard home truths about the human condition? Have we learned nothing from the bloody history of twentieth-century political messianism? The passionate investment of inchoate utopian hopes in a political leader is almost always bad news, even if the bad news stops short of the apocalypse. For the real audacity of hope in politics is to know that our fondest hopes will not be realized through politics. Indeed, if our fondest hopes are such that they can be realized by politics, then our hope is a disordered hope.