I get your point that "unprecedented cult level" popularity will be ascribed, or criticized by those of each generation who behold it enveloping a US presidential candidate or any media attention driven personality.

Supported by the image of JFK and his daughter linked in my sig, I'm making the point that JFK featured the appearance of a man ahead of his time, and his hairstyle and sun glasses say it. He had the sense not to appear in public wearing a hat, and was accused of setting a new fashion trend that depressed men's hat sales, a trend set in motion that carried through to the present.

Compare the visual impression of JFK to that of Eisenhower, Truman, or FDR. One would have to go back as far as TR to find anyone comparable. JFK was of an Irish-Catholic background, and as we experience with Obama today, this background evoked a first time bonding with people who had never identified with a candidate for president, before. I have not even mentioned that there had never been another first lady with Jackie's photogenic quality, coming at a time described as the first TV campaign and presidency. Obama and family do not generate the intensity or level of interest to make them competitive with the Kennedy family obsession, and they don't have a phenomena like the emerging ubiquity of television that the Kennedys had the opportunity to exploit.

"I think that what we're seeing with Obama vis a vis the cultism is VASTLY worse than it was with Clinton, or any Democratic president that I can think of, including JFK (although he was killed shortly before I was born, so I have no personal recollection of those times). Perhaps Jackson was the only other one, but not being an expert on him, I don't know. But in the modern era, on the left at least, this is without precedent in scope and nature, the closest analog being on the right in the form of the unthinking adulation showered upon Reagan, and Bush II, up until the summer of '05. And I suppose Goldwater, circa '60-'64."

I watched JFK's 1960 campaign and then his inauguration speech as an eight year old, and I was a ten year old, sixth grader when his presidency and life were ended. Even at such a young age, and with the passage of nearly 50 years now, since the events of some of those memories, I still feel strongly that the Obama "cult" wave does not hold a candle to the sentiment surrounding Kennedy's victory and brief presidency. The best but still feeble way I can attempt to convey this to you is by asking you to view the photo at this link, and the one linked to my sig...I wish there was some other way, but I guess you "had to be there", to understand what I am saying:

http://img.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/2007/jfk_campaign/jfk_campaign_01.jpg

"The real question one should be asking--if politicians are indeed the craven reeds-in-the-wind equivocators we know them to be--is how can our leaders resist this kind of pressure?"

They can "resist" by trotting out their stenographers in the press corps to back up scapegoating operations of the likes of Porter Goss, while remaining silent while the shill they appointed to run the CIA, joins Goss in shifting the onus onto irrelevant bystander, in this instance, Nancy Pelosi.

It's no different than when it was "all Joe Wilson's fault", remember that "Op", remember the WaPo editorial joining that chorus? Obama has revealed himself to be the Bush/Cheney defense team leader, since he views unrestricted, unaccountable executive power above all else, including the rule of law or the oath he swore to defend the constitution. We knew all this when he reversed himself on Telecom amnesty, a year ago. It's over....on the issues, the transfer of power on January 20, is coming down to a result of as little change as the authority behind the curtain could get away with. We lose....we've gotten used to losing.

Being pragmatic in Washington is the key to advancement, vs sounding "shrill". This is why Pelosi took impeachment "off the table", why Russ Feingold could get no support for his proposal to censure Bush in the senate. It is why the Warren Commission and the 9/11 Commission, and the Silberman-Robb Commission were composed of hacks and fixers, and produced questionable "reports" with "findings" that did not provide answers sufficient to settle the matters the commissions were tasked to investigate.

Obama's pragmatism keeps Bob Gates at DOD and sends a republican "moderate" to represent Obama's state department in China. This pragmatism is a cover for a "one party" political system with two right wings, moving farther to the right, seemingly every moment. Lies and distortions are the main result, but the people mostly think of themselves as centrists, but they mostly are a nice fit to whichever right wing branch of the PARTY, they identify with. Property rules the roost, the two party wings are just window dressing, and "the people" bid up prices of guns and ammunition to previously unheard of levels, just in case "the left" and/or "the poor", decide to move against them....

The Brass Check (1919) Upton Sinclair

* Journalism is one of the devices whereby industrial autocracy keeps its control over political democracy; it is the day-by-day, between-elections propaganda, whereby the minds of the people are kept in a state of acquiescence, so that when the crisis of an election comes, they go to the polls and cast their ballots for either one of the two candidates of their exploiters.

* The methods by which the "Empire of Business" maintains its control over journalism are four: First, ownership of the papers; second, ownership of the owners; third, advertising subsidies; and fourth, direct bribery. By these methods there exists in America a control of news and of current comment more absolute than any monopoly in any other industry.