Crowds and Populism

Here's a thought provoking piece by Fouad Ajami appearing in the Wall Street Journal on the logic behind Obama's crowd appeal.

As the late Nobel laureate Elias Canetti observes in his great book, "Crowds and Power" (first published in 1960), the crowd is based on an illusion of equality: Its quest is for that moment when "distinctions are thrown off and all become equal. It is for the sake of this blessed moment, when no one is greater or better than another, that people become a crowd." These crowds, in the tens of thousands, who have been turning out for the Democratic standard-bearer in St. Louis and Denver and Portland, are a measure of American distress.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122533157015082889.html