Man-Crush Alert!!

From the no longer to be taken seriously Ezra Klein:

Obama's finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don't even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair. The other great leaders I've heard guide us towards a better politics, but Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves, to the place where America exists as a glittering ideal, and where we, its honored inhabitants, seem capable of achieving it, and thus of sharing in its meaning and transcendence.


To be fair, Ezra has a poor basis for making judgements about orators, shown here by his list of greatest hits:

Howard Dean challenging the Democratic Party to rediscover courage and return to principle.

Bill Clinton speak(ing) of a place called Hope

John Edwards bravely channel(ing) the populism that American politics so often suppresses.

I especially like the part about how brave Edwards is, and how Dean and Edwards are/were "great leaders".