This is amazing, wish there was more ink about it. I’ve always been inclined to believe that Obama is your standard politician-believer, a guy who kneels in prayer with a wink and a nod. It’s no small thing, for example, that Wright, Obama’s spiritual mentor or whatever, leads a particularly well-connected black congregation in Chicago (here, a few paragraphs in). Sure, blame this on my liberal distaste for religious folk, my point is that curiousity about Obama’s personal relationship with God apparently runs rampant.
In the end, I don’t care all that much about the faith thing, though. I’m more interested in everyone’s (myself included) urge to know Obama’s soul. We’ve all marveled at Obama’s flawless performance of authenticity, his ability to control the tools of his campaign—be they his facial muscles or his associates—so well that there is yet to be a single significant “pants down” moment. And like so many others, I often project my hopes and dreams onto the “Real Obama” behind the veil, substantiating that parts of “Politician Obama” that I like and arguing that the rest is a valuable and necessary display of political fluency.
So, insofar as we can buy into the idea that a note in the Western Wall is meant to be an intimate message from the innermost Me to Him, there are two possibilities to speculate about. If the theft was not anticipated, then I was right all along: Real Obama’s an alright dude. If his note is in fact a message intended for the public, then it seems Real Obama doesn’t exist at all; Obama is Political Obama through and through.
I’m not sure which option I’d prefer, mainly because I don’t like the choice. The Real Obama/Political Obama distinction is a powerful one (a newspaper desecrated the western wall on its behalf, after all), but, much like the Natural/Modernity distinction, I have a hunch that it’s not a good or relevant one. I’d rather not think that through, though—might lead to Heidegger references and the like.
