Obama as Chauncey Gardiner

Last weekend I watched an entertaining movie called "Being There" with Peter Sellers and Shirley MacLaine. In addition to its entertainment value, it is impossible not to draw parallels to today's presidential race. Without doing justice to the film, the plot revolves around an older gentleman who spent his entire life gardening for a wealthy old man on his isolated estate. Upon the older man's death, the gardener is evicted from the property and is forced into the outside world, where his simple rhetoric, accompanied by his distinguished looks, is interpreted as deep and insightful allegorical analysis. (Even his name, Chauncey Gardiner, was inferred after the character said he was Chance the Gardener.)

In today's WSJ, Stephen Hayes has a different take, drawing parallels between Obama's rhetoric and Ronald Reagan's in 1980s and warning against the GOP not taking him seriously. While I think Hayes is a great journalist, I believe that Reagan's rhetoric was based on substantive ideas that people believed in, whereas Chauncey Gardiner Obama's are based solely on the interpretation of the listener.

The film is very entertaining and, I believe, instructive in illustrating the rise of the Obama phenomenon. As to whether Obama is more like Reagan or Gardiner, I don't think there is a question about it.