Some among the heaviest of Obama Kool-Aid drinkers are awakening to the performance gap between the campaign myth of Obama versus the reality of his inability to govern. America’s Fourth Great Awakening has begun.

Historians widely recognize three Great Awakenings. The First Great Awakening (1730’s-1740’s) spread across the United Kingdom and the Colonies with a religious fervor among what became the mainline Protestant denominations: Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, etc. The Second (1790-1840’s) witnessed Christian conversions, camp meetings, and evangelical excitement giving birth to the Holiness movement and, indirectly, the spread of a new sect – the Mormons. The Third (1840’s-1900’s), interrupted by the Civil War, was a period of religious enthusiasm that fostered social activism, as illustrated by the Social Gospel Movement.

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Today, we’re entering the Fourth Great Awakening. It’s the revival of the Obama Kool-Aid drinkers from their stupor of infatuation with candidate Barack Obama. Mort Zuckerman is their new poster boy, and his newfound sobriety is clearly painful for him.

Zuckerman’s article entitled “The Incredible Deflation of Barack Obama,” appearing on-line January 21, 2010 in his magazine U.S. News & World Report, is the confession of a reformed Obama Kool-Aid drinker. Mort knows what it’s like to be conned; he lost millions to Bernie Madoff. Now he’s appearing on news shows testifying to his awakening.


Remember, this is the same Mort Zuckerman who owns the New York Daily News, wherein an October 19, 2008 editorial endorsed candidate Obama.

Obama has been called audacious, and he certainly is. But his confidence is supported by both a high intelligence and a clear-eyed pragmatism, qualities that enabled him to best more established competitors – now to stand within reach of breaking America’s ultimate racial barrier.

A brilliant mind combined with practicality would well serve any President, and the reserves shown by Obama suggest he would bring nimbleness and judgment to the Oval Office. So does his crucial vow to reach across the aisle for solutions frozen in partisan gridlock.

Mort wasn’t the only one to buy the “high intelligence” myth of Senator Barack Obama. Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo took a long, deep swig from the Kool-Aid jug. On September 4, 2008, as a guest on the Larry King show, Cuomo said about Obama that:

He’s a new kind of intelligence. He’s young and bright. He has a different attitude toward the world, a more cosmopolitan attitude.

A new kind of intelligence!  Cosmopolitan! Wow! Back then, Mario was all over the news comparing Obama to Lincoln:


Unfortunately, there’s no evidence that Mario has joined the Fourth Great Awakening, or ever will.

But Chris Matthews, who once felt a thrill going up his leg when Obama spoke, is showing early signs of a revival from his laced Kool-Aid stupor. He recently had a convoluted debate with former DNC Chairman Howard Dean. It resembles the “Who’s on first” skit made famous by Abbott and Costello:


These days it looks like something is running down, rather than up, Chris’s leg. And he’s not happy about it.

America’s Fourth Great Awakening has begun.  The newfound sobriety will be painful.