Here’s Melanie Phillips.
Such a suspension of disbelief calls to mind someone else closer to home: Princess Diana, who also inspired hysterical adoration because she, too, became an icon of idealism — challenging the established order.A deeply attractive figure, she seemed to embody hope for a better universe by appealing to emotion rather than reason.Love, as embodied by ‘the queen of people’s hearts’, was held to be the key to a better, kinder, gentler world. There was even a sense that her mere touch was sufficient to heal the afflicted.It was, of course, all pure fantasy. People had fallen for a carefully spun image which bore little relation to the manipulative and unstable woman who was the real Diana, but which spoke to something deep inside them. So it is with Obama.