The peculiar truth is that there are a host of Barack Obamas. Once upon a time, American presidents were limited by reality. He could make one speech at a time, lobby Congress one issue at a time, and tour the country locality by locality. Now, there is Barack Obama the human being; Barack Obama the Twitter avatar, whose words are written by a team; Barack Obama the website; Barack Obama the 501(c)3. It’s exhausting. The “Big Brother!” character in George Orwell’s 1984, remember, was not insidious solely because the government he represented was all-powerful and all-seeing, but because he probably didn’t exist. Big Brother was just a construct — a human face and unitary focal point onto which an entire movement and power structure could project itself.
Remember of course that Wiggleroom compared himself to “a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views,” and it all becomes creepier still. And that wasn’t an off-the-cuff line from some speech or interview — that was from one of his two (!) autobiographies written before he was elected President.
What will the third one contain — if anything?
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