Smart people fell for this ---not this time, I hope

From American Thinker: 

In his book, Branding Obamessiah, Mark Edward Taylor wrote about Obama's "Devotional Code" -- religious-sounding rhetorical themes that permeated Obama's communication during his campaign for the presidency. Taylor identified the "Sacred Six" characteristics -- a creation story, sacred words, sacred images, sacred ritual, true believers, and a messianic leader -- that created a public perception that Barack Obama embodied "hope and change" for the future, that created an image of him as "The One." 

Knowing that he was an inexperienced candidate (arguably the most inexperienced ever), Mr. Obama's campaign staff in 2008 sought to downplay the importance of experience, even to make it appear undesirable. Thus was born the idea that Obama would be portrayed as a "change agent" bringing in fresh new ideas and pushing out the stale, outmoded ones. Taylor wrote, "Obama talked about 'Change' in a way that made both Clinton and McCain pay the price for their years of experience. Obama's ad copy 'Change' trumped the 'Experience' of his opponents and made them appear to be just a couple of recycled Washington insiders ... it turned Obama's major liability into an asset."

 Obama's advisers admitted to relying on the axiom, "Your strength is your weakness, and your weakness is your strength." Mr. Obama's savvy strategists for 2008 figured ways to make the Ivy-League elitist into an "everyman." With inherently vague, evocative rhetoric, the presidential candidate allowed the voters to "fill in the blanks" while he promised everything in general, but nothing specific. It didn't suit their purposes to explain the kind of change that was coming; indeed, it would have spelled disaster to have elaborated on the "changes" that Mr. Obama envisioned. No one on Team Obama -- in particular those who really knew, like, for example, Valerie Jarrett -- wanted to address the specifics of the "fundamental transformation" Mr. Obama intended to make happen. It was enough to build up people's anticipation that their hopes -- no matter what those hopes were -- would finally be realized. As Taylor said, "[t]rue believers read into the [campaign] language a meaning that suited them."

 Candidate Obama, the secular ideologue, used "Sacred Words" to shape himself into the image of an evangelical believer. The radical leftist Saul Alinsky acolyte told voters what they wanted to hear, convincing them that with Obama they could "make progress" (another generality that voters could shape into their own interpretation).

 Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/06/obama_reinvents_sacred_themes_for_2012.html#ixzz1x3kNs5Rh