Describing the thrill of his all-too-fleeting encounter with the Hope Pope, Olsen continued: “I stood, my hand embraced in his and…I felt something…something that I can only describe as an overpowering sense of Hope.” (capitalization in the original).

Reading through numerous similar accounts, I, too, felt something….something that I can only describe as an overpowering sense of … embarrassment.

How can intelligent and responsible people fall for this mass hysteria over a politician whose only real accomplishment in 47 years of living has been to build up the mass hysteria and messianic expectations surrounding this campaign? When I was in high school, I remember feeling puzzled and bemused by the similar frenzy surrounding the hip new British band, the Beatles. Yeah, they were great musicians and their clothes and hair cuts looked indisputably cool, but it still seemed hard to explain the smart teenaged girls I knew who flocked to see them at the Hollywood Bowl and ended up shrieking to the point of hoarseness, while weeping and, literally, wetting themselves in an orgy of adulation.

The difference, of course, is that we can still listen to Beatles songs with pleasure and satisfaction some forty years later, but it’s doubtful that any Obama speech (let alone his fumbling, bumbling off-teleprompter interviews) will thrill anyone even next year.

As with other moments of religious and quasi-religious frenzy, it’s not what the candidate is saying, or the proposals (what proposals, exactly?) he’s making, or even Obama himself that creates the manic energy surrounding his campaign. It’s the phenomenon itself, the crazed delirium of the Oba-maniacs, that compels attention, even fascination. Some people went to those first Beatles concerts as much to watch the tearful, hysterical, hollering adolescent girls as to hear the music; in fact those screaming sweeties usually drowned out the performances on stage so crowds couldn’t even hear the tunes and lyrics. It didn’t matter for the participants, who cared only about the transcendent excitement, the mass delirium, of the historic experience.

So, too, the messianic yearnings and wild-eyed, zombie-like devotion of Obama’s unhinged followers comes across as far more exciting and significant than the surprisingly pedestrian and platitudinous substance of his actual campaign. For the candidate as cult leader, it’s not the message; it’s the moment.