A
year ago Barack Obama was walking on water. Today he’s treading just to
stay afloat. A year ago his soaring oratory enraptured a nation. A year
later his speeches cannot lift him passed a fifty percent approval
rating.

How did the American Messiah become such an ordinary mortal?

What
President Obama failed to understand is that America doesn’t do well
with Messiahs of any sort, preferring self-redemption to that brought
by some great rescuer. Americans are a fiercely independent people and
quickly grow suspicious of anyone who poses as a national savior. Sure,
they might get behind a knight in shinning armor for a bit, especially
if his charisma and cadences raise them up from a national funk. But
there is always going to be a backlash in a nation that prides itself
on being self-made, as opposed to Messiah-made.

Two hundred thirty three years ago the United States broke with
long-standing European tradition of treating a sovereign as a
quasi-divine figure. Let other nations call their kings majesty.
Americans called George III a tyrant. While the French and Austrians
spoke of the divine right of kings, Thomas Jefferson responded with the
inalienable rights of the people. Ever since then Americans have
treated government in general, and figures who promise salvation in
particular, with deep suspicion. (And while we may worship the memories
of Lincoln, Kennedy, and King after their martyrdoms, in their
lifetimes they were assailed and criticized.)

Looking back at the past year one cannot but conclude that Obama was
gripped by something of a Messiah complex. How else to explain a
President who fired on so many dizzying cylinders that it was a
challenge to simply keep up with his vast initiatives. This was a
President who, in his first year, was going to tackle health care,
rehabilitate the image of America abroad, modernize the Islamic world
and make it more tolerant, fix the banking industry, end global
warming, save Afghanistan, withdraw from Iraq, repair a shattered
economy, bring Kennedyesque elegance to the White House, end the
Middle-East conflict, and transform brutal dictators like Hug Chavez
into huggable, peace-loving democrats through the power of his personal
charm. Tack on ending global hunger and ushering in world peace and you
essentially have it. Obama, savior of mankind.

But as Obama has now learned, it’s not the big things that
ultimately matter to the people but the little, boring ones. Who would
have thought that a man so great would have been humbled by a problem
so mundane as simple jobs? With one in five American men unemployed,
the nation looked at the globe-trotting histrionics and wondered, do we
need a savior or a simple chief executive? Who would have thought that
rather than making real progress on any of these vast cosmic fronts
Obama would instead reach Messianic criteria by being crucified in
Massachusetts?

The biggest sign that President Obama has now fallen to earth and
disrobed himself of his Messianic cloak was the unbelievable line he
used in the State of the Union where he finally conceded his
vulnerability: “I never suggested that change would be easy, or that I
could do it alone.” When I heard President Obama finally say these
words, I was reminded of Jethro’s admonition to his son-in-law Moses
when that exalted leader also made the error of believing that
leadership meant performing for, rather than empowering, the people:
“You will surely wear yourself out both you and these people who are
with you for the matter is too heavy for you; you cannot do it alone.”

Dennis Prager often makes the point that America was founded by Old
Testament, as opposed to New Testament, Christians. In other words, our
founding fathers, in embracing the Judeo-Christian values that became
the bedrock of our republic, put more emphasis on the Judeo than the
Christian part. Nowhere is this more visible than in the American
rendering of leadership.

The Christian Messiah is an all-encompassing divinity, able to bring
the dead back to life, feed millions with scant resources, and redeem
all mankind from sin. Humanity for all its righteous action, is
woefully inadequate and sinful and is therefore utterly dependent on
the Christian Messiah for salvation. It is not the people but Jesus who
ultimately does the heavy lifting. We need Christ to redeem us.

But the Jewish Messiah is mortal. He will be nothing more than a
great wise man who will empower the people to believe in their capacity
for self-redemption and help humanity achieve a critical mass of virtue
which will swing the world into a more perfect state.

In this you begin to see the difference between the socialist and
capitalist tendencies of Europe and the United States. In Europe
government is a big uncle who ultimately takes care of all your needs.
In the United States government is a safety net, helping you to get on
your feet when you have fallen but expecting you to walk on your own.

When I lived in England I was amazed at just how submissive to
authority the people could be. True, the press is a Rottweiler,
snapping at everyone in power. And the citizenry likewise drip with
cynicism and sarcasm toward their leaders. But it stops there. The idea
of a Tea Party movement to demand, say, a lowering of taxation would be
about as likely as the British dropping cricket and adopting baseball.

It was this aspect of Britain that drove me crazy. As an American I
had been raised to make my voice heard. But at the University of Oxford
many of the British students viewed the Americans as arrogant
interlopers because of their tendency to make their presence felt.

Little did I realize that, after 11 years in Europe I would return
to live in a state that somehow allowed its politicians to run
roughshod over its citizenry. Every day we in New Jersey read about how
our politicians are, aside from Illinois, the most corrupt in the
Union, our property taxes the highest, our schools the worst, our
politicians tone-deaf to our real needs, with little price to pay.

But now even we in New Jersey are waking up and taking government
back. Two weeks ago we inaugurated a new governor after – finally –
getting fed up of being ripped off with out-of-control taxes and poor
services.

President Obama should view his new-found vulnerability as a
blessing. He is fortunate to have discovered early enough in his
presidency that saviors are antithetical to the American character. We
want leaders who empower us to take control of our lives rather than
Messiahs who tell us they know what’s best for us, even when we
emphatically disagree.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s book The Kosher Sutra has just been
published in paperback (HarperOne). He is the founder of This World:
The Values Network, which among other things promotes the value of
self-reliance. http://www.shmuley.com.