Early on in this race, a lot of Americans, including some friends of mine, became enamored with with “idea” of an Obama presidency. As any good post-modern will tell you, narratives are everything, and the Obama narrative was über appealing. But here in the final hours before an election set in the most volatile global context since 1936, my hope is that moderate voters are taking a hard look at “President Obama” the reality.

The ever-brilliant Mark Steyn explores this theme here.  An excerpt:

The two-dimensional idea of President Obama is seductive: To elect a young black man of Kenyan extraction and Indonesian upbringing offers redemption both for America’s original sin (slavery) and for the more recent perceived sins of President Bush — his supposed enthusiasm for sticking it to foreigners generally, and the Muslim world in particular. And no, I’m not saying he’s Muslim. It’s worse than that: He’s a pasty-faced European — at least in his view of state power, welfare, and taxation. . .The problem is we’re not electing a symbol, a logo, a two-dimensional image. Long before he emerged on the national stage as Barack the Hope-Giver and Bringer of Change, there was a three-dimensional Barack Obama, a real man who lives in the real world. And that’s where the problem lies.