Albany Times Union (Sunday)

Is ‘the force’ with Beto O’rourke?

- Washington ▶ Dowd writes for The New York Times.

The heavens part. The light shines down. The rise in the oceans begins to slow. The world is once more bathed in the mystical glow of a messiah. Our redemption from Donald Trump is at hand.

We have The One again, a New One — another lanky, bookish, handsome man with an attractive young family, a thin résumé, an exotic name, a hip affect, a rock star aura, a liberal press corps ready to fluff his pillows and a frothing

Fox News.

Let Elizabeth Warren knock herself out with policy proposals. Let Kamala Harris be the adult in the room. Let Bernie Sanders bellow away.

The magical man-boy, Beto O’rourke, has come back from his 40 days in the desert — vlogging, contemplat­ing, floating in and out of a funk — to share his gifts.

He has given us the blessed news: “Man,

I’m just born to be in it.” He told Vanity Fair that his words at a Texas campaign stop when he was trying to unseat Ted Cruz were pulled out of him “by some greater force.”

Beto floats above the fray, staying vague on nettlesome issues. The 46-year-old offers the politics of feelings.

“I don’t have a team counting delegates,” he told Vanity Fair, adding, “It’s probably not the most profession­al thing you’ve ever heard about this, but I just feel it.”

Joe Kennedy built his family’s political myth on good hair, white teeth and glossy star quality. Why shouldn’t Beto?

After all, during his 2008 campaign, Obama merely went back to Chicago to see Malia perform in “The Odyssey.” Beto loved the epic so much, he thought about naming his son “Odysseus,” settling instead for “Ulysses.”

Wandering alone is part of the hero’s journey defined by Joseph Campbell. Beto loves Joseph Campbell and “Star Wars,” which was inspired by Campbell’s work.

The last One, about the same age when he jumped into national politics precocious­ly aiming to usurp his elders, was also a uniter who went on an odyssey of self-discovery in New York while at Columbia.

The last One also sold a cult of personalit­y, offered himself as a symbol of modernity, sparked Oprah’s interest and had a preoccupat­ion with being cool. Indeed, Obama told David Axelrod recently on “The Axe Files” that Beto reminded him of himself.

The One anointing the New One. Joe

Biden, pushed aside by Obama in the last election, was understand­ably irritated.

To many, Beto’s appeal is his persona as a quasi-rebellious ‘90s suburban teenager, a skateboard­ing punk rocker who seems to have modeled his campaign logo on the spicy ketchup logo at Whataburge­r.

But others are less charmed. A satirical video on Twitter by skaters mocked “badskater Beto” as the kind of middle-school poser who “went to Zumiez and spent $27 on stickers.” In a new Reuters story, Joseph Menn reveals that while O’rourke was still a teenager, he was a member of the Cult of the Dead Cow, a stealthy hacking group named after an old Texas slaughterh­ouse.

A hacker might be refreshing after a president who refers to Tim Cook as Tim Apple. Still, Menn writes, “it’s unclear whether the United States is ready for a presidenti­al contender who, as a teenager, stole long-distance phone service for his dial-up modem, wrote a murder fantasy in which the narrator drives over children on the street, and mused about a society without money.”

The 15th entry in the Democratic race is at the nexus of many tricky issues for a party desperate to oust Individual 1 from the White House.

Is it better to nominate a celebrity like Obama with a slight record that cannot be targeted or someone with establishe­d credential­s? Should the nominee spring from the far left, the vector brimming with electricit­y and fight, or is that suicidal in a national election?

Will Democratic voters longing for another Obama and the minority voters who strayed from Hillary want an African-american? Can pugilistic progressiv­es stomach a rich kid like Beto at a time when the country is in an eatthe-rich mood?

As The Wall Street Journal reports, O’rourke tried to please Texas Republican business leaders when he “opposed Obamacare, voted against Nancy Pelosi as the House Democratic leader and called for a raise in the Social Security eligibilit­y age.”

The fever is running high in his party. Will Beto turn out to be born for it or borne away by it?

 ??  ?? Maureen Dowd
Maureen Dowd

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