When I was about 14 years old, I picked up a paperback box set of The Iliad and the Odyssey that one of my siblings had already abandoned. It was the Penguin Classics edition (Fagles translation) that so many of us would come to know in high school or college in the 1960’s and 70’s.

The Iliad mostly bored me, although I loved the character of Patroclus because he reminded me of myself at the time.

But the Odyssey enthralled me. The adventures of Odysseus were exciting, made for a teenager’s imagination. He was a flawed hero, of course. He played around on his wife. He thumbed his nose at the gods. And his hubris got him into trouble more than once – most dramatically when he challenged the might of Poseidon himself by killing his son Polyphemus, the cyclops. This so angered Poseidon that he caused Odysseus to wander many years before he could return to his home in Ithaca.

But of all the adventures and misfortunes to befall Odysseus, the most compelling has to be his journey past the islands where the Sirens sang their songs to bewitch unwary sailors. It was said that mariners went mad upon hearing the achingly beautiful music so of course, Odysseus being Odysseus, he had to tempt fate by finding a way to hear the songs but not come under the Siren’s spell. Circe informed him that if he ordered his men to plug their ears with beeswax while Odysseus tied himself to the mast, giving his men orders not to release him no matter how insistent he became, he might safely traverse the waters near the Siren’s island.

So they sang, in sweet utterance, and the heart within me
desired to listen, and I signaled to my companions to set me
free, nodding with my brows, but they leaned on and rowed hard,
and Perimedes and Eurylochus, rising up, straightway
fastened me with even more lashings and squeezed me tighter.

Odysseus was able to resist the Siren’s call only be being physically restrained by his men. But it appears to some observers that when it comes to Barack Obama’s feel good, cotton candy campaign and its vapid call for “change,” the great mass of his supporters may be better off if the plug their ears with beeswax or lash themselves to a sturdy timber somewhere.

Jack Tapper:

Obama supporter Kathleen Geier writes that she’s “getting increasingly weirded out by some of Obama’s supporters. On listservs I’m on, some people who should know better – hard-bitten, not-so-young cynics, even – are gushing about Barack…

Describing various encounters with Obama supporters, she writes, “Excuse me, but this sounds more like a cult than a political campaign. The language used here is the language of evangelical Christianity – the Obama volunteers speak of ‘coming to Obama’ in the same way born-again Christians talk about ‘coming to Jesus.’...So I say, we should all get a grip, stop all this unseemly mooning over Barack, see him and the political landscape he is a part of in a cooler, clearer, and more realistic light, and get to work.”

Joe Klein, writing at Time, notes “something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism” he sees in Obama’s Super Tuesday speech.

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” Obama said. “This time can be different because this campaign for the presidency of the United States of America is different. It’s different not because of me. It’s different because of you.”

Says Klein: “That is not just maddeningly vague but also disingenuous: the campaign is entirely about Obama and his ability to inspire. Rather than focusing on any specific issue or cause — other than an amorphous desire for change — the message is becoming dangerously self-referential. The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is. “

I too feel the magnetic pull of the man. I have expressed my admiration for Obama on many occasions, complimenting him on his political gifts and that rare ability to inspire hope in people.

But c’mon people. Get a grip. Better yet, take another look at Obama not as a “charismatic” politician but as a potential president of the United States. Charisma don’t cut it when sitting in the Big Chair. All one need do is look at the presidency of that other “change” artist and charisma freak John F. Kennedy.

Kennedy is much more consequential of an historical figure when looking at him retrospectively than he was while in office. His apologists in the academy (and the relentless Kennedy PR machine’s 40 year effort to canonize him) have turned a mediocre presidency into some kind of Golden Age of American politics. This is nuts. Kennedy was not much of a reformer nor was he much of a chief executive. His introduction of the Civil Rights Act came only after the standoff between Wallace at the University of Alabama forced his hand. He opposed the Freedom Riders (even though he assigned Federal Marshalls to protect them) and he had no qualms about J. Edgar Hoover bugging Martin Luther King’s sordid private life.

Kennedy’s “charisma” couldn’t move the Civil Rights Act in Congress one inch. Nor could his “charisma” give him the foreknowledge not to increase our commitment of “advisors” in Viet Nam from Eisenhower’s 800 to an eventual 16,000 with “free fire zones,” napalm, and defoliants. Charisma is a fine attribute for a politician to have in running a campaign. But it doesn’t make a dime’s bit of difference when confronting Congress or the truly evil people in this world that Obama has promised to sit down with. I daresay that President Ahmadinejad would probably be immune to Mr. Obama’s charisma as would Baby Assad in Syria and perhaps even Hugo Chavez although the Venezuelan dictator might be eager to share his insights into how to build a cult of personality here in America.

This hasn’t stopped people – young and old – from comparing Obama to JFK and reveling in their ignorance. Here’s Ian Rock trying to break through the hysteria and ask some pertinent questions of the Obamamaniacs:

I have been listening to many of your reasons for supporting Obama. I have watched a good number of interviews on CNN, MSNBC and YouTube to better understand why you think Obama will be great president in 2008, and I keep hearing things like:

“It’s just the way he lights up a room”

“We haven’t seen a candidate this charismatic since JFK.”

“It’s just hard to be objective with this guy”

Obama fans seem to give you the same general answer. Mostly, it has something to do with this charisma. If you want a good example check out a recent interview George Clooney gave explaining his reason; you get the same JFK personality “thing.”

To me, it’s like you are all voting for Obama because of some unexplainable aura he exudes. Everyone is swooning over this almost mysterious attraction he exudes. “Electric” is another word I have been hearing.

Mr. Rock calls these Obama supporters “groupies” which may be a little unfair. “Disciples” may be more to the point. Make no mistake. There is a religious overlay to the Obama campaign. Not necessarily in direct appeals to God but rather in its portrayal of the candidate as savior of America. And Obama himself uses the cadence and imagrey when speaking that calls to mind the Sunday sermon.

I can see where some liberals might find this “creepy” although I think it more pitiful than dangerous. Eventually, Obama is going to have to start filling out that empty suit he’s been walking around in these past months. Or Hillary (or McCain) will do it for him. Either way, his doe-eyed supporters who look at him as the answer to our civic prayers will no doubt become a little less enamored of their hero once his Dorian Gray facade starts to crumble as a result of media scrutiny and opposition attacks.

Vanity Fair writer and left wing hate monger James Wolcott also raises an eyebrow at the Obama supplicants:

“(p)erhaps it’s my atheism at work but I found myself increasingly wary of and resistant to the salvational fervor of the Obama campaign, the idealistic zeal divorced from any particular policy or cause and chariot-driven by pure euphoria. I can picture President Hillary in the White House dealing with a recalcitrant Republican faction; I can’t picture President Obama in the same role because his summons to history and call to hope seems to transcend legislative maneuvers and horse-trading; his charisma is on a more ethereal plane, and I don’t look to politics for transcendence and self-certification.”

There is no way that Obama can transfer this “idealistic zeal” to any policy prescription or grand idea because once he fills in the blanks of specificity on any issue, he is bound to lose support. The press is just now catching up to the fact that even for a politician, Obama is incredibly vague. This, he must be since getting specific will necessarily destroy Obama’s strength as a candidate; the fact that he can currently be all things to all people -an empty vessel filled with the hopes and dreams of millions.

It will be interesting to watch over the next several months whether Hillary Clinton can fill in some of the blanks deliberately created by Obama and thus peel away some of his less enamored followers. It’s one thing to be an agent of change. It’s quite another thing to get specific about exactly what kind of change you are proposing.

I daresay that not all of today’s Obama supporters will be there at the end once that specificity is given life either by a desperate Clinton or a press grown tired of the platitudes and moralizing of the candidate himself.