The Daily Gamecock

Issue date: 9/18/08 Section: Viewpoints

Michael Baumann Fourth-year print journalism student

I've gotten some pretty angry comments on my columns before, but I'm pretty sure there's going to be a reward for my capture, dead or alive, after this, because I'm going to compare Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler.

Now, let's be perfectly clear here. Obama seems like a great guy - there's a good chance that I'll even vote for him - and I'd be extremely surprised if he invaded Poland or perpetrated a genocide.

That said, I've seen Obama live twice, and what I saw scared me a little. A charismatic speaker about to take power on the heels of nearly a decade of economic and national security disasters, seducing an audience - and an electorate, for that matter - that is so desperate for something to hope for that they'll cling to anything.

Obamania has gripped the nation and allowed a man who has done absolutely nothing of significance in four years in the Senate to appear on T-shirts, spark viral video frenzies and speak in front of 200,000 at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.

This almost messianic anointment of Obama has given me pause. Yes, he could very well be the greatest thing to hit American politics since the teleprompter, but...

If you can, find a video of Hitler speaking. If you can put out of your mind for one moment the unbelievable evil he did and just watch and listen, his public speaking manner is absolutely hypnotic. In 1938, when Hitler's ugly side was starting to show, Princeton University freshmen voted British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain the "greatest living person." He beat Hitler by one vote.

Obama and Hitler both represented vehicles of change (though of obviously different kinds) and have enjoyed meteoric rises to national and international superstardom by being, probably, the two best political orators of the past 100 years.

That, of course, is more or less where the similarities end, but the lesson remains: be extremely careful of being seduced by political rhetoric. Hitler was seen as a great man by many Americans as late as one year before the start of World War II. Within seven years, he would start and lose the second-bloodiest war in world history, systematically arrange the murder of 11 million innocent people and change the course of world politics forever.

Like I said, Obama is not Hitler.

But Obama is also not Jesus Christ, and we should treat his rhetoric - beautiful, optimistic and seductive as it may be - with a fairly large helping of skepticism.

I have the luxury of knowing that my vote won't count. I'm registered in New Jersey, a state with 15 electoral votes that would go blue if Stalin ran for the Democrats and Gandhi for the Republicans, so whoever I vote for, be it Obama, John McCain or Libertarian candidate Bob Barr, it won't matter.

But many of your votes will, particularly if you've come here from Ohio, Florida, Virginia or Pennsylvania. So if you vote for Obama, vote for him because, for all his shortcomings, you think he'd do a better job running the country than the other guys, not because you think he can save your soul and forgive your sins.

If you do that, you're going to be very disappointed when the other shoe drops.

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