Demonic_ How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America - Ann Coulter [12]
By contrast, in Obama’s first year in office, he was consistently voted the most popular human on the planet. Even before becoming president, Obama was showered with awards. He won not one but two “Best Spoken Word Album” Grammy awards for his audiobooks, Dreams from My Father (2006) and The Audacity of Hope (2008). (He then gave the least profanity-laced acceptance speech of any African-American Grammy winner in history.)
His concession speech after the New Hampshire primary was turned into a music video, which won an Emmy Award. In 2008, the Obama yard sign/bumper sticker became a status symbol accessory like a Prius, solar panels on your house, or an adopted Malawian baby.
Throughout 2009, headlines incessantly announced, “Obama by Far the Most Popular Political Leader in Europe and U.S.; No Other Head of Government Comes Close.” Liberals around the globe worshipped Obama, and suddenly America became the most admired country in the world, jumping six places to do so.39 Obama even won a Nobel Peace Prize based on his first twelve days in office.
Like a first-time bestselling author obsessively checking Amazon rankings, liberals were transfixed by Obama’s sky-high popularity, commissioning poll after poll on the subject in February, April, May, and December of 2009. The last such poll taken seems to have come in April 2010, when Obama’s worldwide popularity began to sink. At home in the United States, the Dalai Lama beat Obama, who merely tied with Hillary Clinton at 57 percent. And so the poll was taken no more.40
Also during his first year in office, Obama was named “the sexiest politician in the world” by OnePoll.com.41 His wife Michelle was named one of the “100 Sexiest Women on the Planet” by Maxim magazine, which called her “the hottest First Lady in the history of these United States.” Obama was the runaway winner of Gallup News’s Most Admired Man poll in both 2008 and 2009.42 He came in fifth in Jockey International’s “Celebrity Dad Most Women Want to See in Their Undies” list, just behind Brad Pitt, Matthew McConaughey, Hugh Jackman, and Will Smith.43
Obama was more popular than Justin Bieber (and for my money, a hundred times dreamier!).
A few years into Obama’s failed presidency, liberals were still besotted. Washington Post readers got this crucial update in the October 12, 2010, edition: “The moment was vintage Obama—emphasizing his zest for inquiry, his personal involvement, his willingness to make the tough call, his search for middle ground. If an Obama brand exists, it is his image as a probing, cerebral President conducting an exhaustive analysis of the issues so that the best ideas can emerge, and triumph.”44
Who knows what issue was being probed, what zestful inquiry instigated, or what tough call being made. For all we know, he was deciding which flavor ice cream to order during the next geopolitical crisis. The point was: Obama was a dreamboat.
The Left’s passionate adoration of President Obama—and Clinton, FDR, JFK, Hillary, Teddy Kennedy, and on and on—are the primitive emotions of a mob. These are sentiments generally associated with women, children, and savages, according to Le Bon. It’s not an accident that when Republicans of all stripes—Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rand Paul, Sharron Angle, and Christine O’Donnell—choose an epithet for Democrats, it’s to call them women. Everyone sees it: Democrats are a mob.
The flip side of liberals turning their own leaders into icons is that they also “consider as enemies all by whom [their dogmas] are not accepted.”45
Being a successful president, Reagan was detested by liberals. There were mob protests throughout Reagan’s presidency in all the usual hotspots—Germany, Spain, Italy, London, New York, Los Angeles, Ann Arbor, Berkeley, and Madison. Month after month, filthy wastrels hurled paint and projectiles at police, smashed