(Note: this is a portion of an item cross-posted from Beliefnet.com)
I’m less certain than Mara Vanderslice that John McCain’s recent pattern of decrying Barack Obama’s “messianism” is a deliberate effort to label him as the Antichrist. It’s not that I consider Team McCain incapable of “dog whistle” appeals to the Christian Right; their candidate has certainly mastered those dark arts in a variety of abstract references to his hatred of “judicial activism,” which to that audience means legalized abortion, gay partnership rights, and church-state separation. But unless John Hagee spent some time whispering in McCain’s ear during their brief public partnership, I wouldn’t guess he or his campaign advisors possess the kind of theological dexterity necessary to paint the 666 on Obama’s forehead. But maybe Mara’s right. We’ll see if McCain’s campaign continues using religiously-charged terms like “the anointed one” in references to their opponent.
The more obvious problem with McCain’s attacks on Obama’s charisma is simple hypocrisy. No recent presidential candidate in either party has done more to build a cult of personality around himself and his biography, from the arrogant assertion that he is uniquely a “straight-talker,” to the massive investment his campaigns past and present have made in the proposition that his courage and suffering as a POW should fully qualify him for the presidency and rebut any criticism. (Yes, I know he has a long record in Congress, but even many Republicans admit that record is something of an incoherent mess, particularly given his vast flip-flopping during the current campaign cycle).
McCain has also been an eager participant in the self-parodying WWRD (What Would Reagan Do?) idolatry so common among conservatives. And let’s don’t forget (which is easy to do given subsequent events) that during the brief moment of triumphalism before, during and after the invasion of Iraq, many conservatives engaged in an orgy of messianism about George W. Bush as a towering world-historical figure who was decisively and single-handedly smiting the forces of Islamofascism by deposing Saddam Hussein (another candidate for the Antichrist job in some Christian Right precincts) and creating a pro-American revolution throughout the Middle East and beyond.
One party’s “messianism” is clearly another’s “charisma.”