On Monday we learned the sad news that Barbaro, the sleek, heroic champion who captivated the nation after his impressive Kentucky Derby victory lost the 8-month fight for his life. Some, probably not animal lovers, were struck by the outpouring of emotion over the loss of this beautiful animal. “It’s just a horse,” they snorted. These people are missing the point. To understand the affection the public had for Barbaro. This horse has a lot in common with our own junior senator, the preternatural democrat messiah, Barack Hussein Obama (and not just the similar sounding name).

No, not because he was a lithe, long-legged creature who liked to run, although reportedly Senator Obama does like to work out. Nor do I draw the comparison because some, notably the Chicago Sun-Times’ Lynn Sweet, view the senator as quite a stud, which would have been Barbaro’s next career move but for his unfortunate demise.

Those who adored him knew what Barbaro was thinking and feeling without ever hearing him speak it. He wasn’t Mr. Ed, after all, so that’s a given. Since he couldn’t speak for himself, we could supply his thoughts and feelings, which were really our own, which he reflected back. As we basked in the glow of these reflections, we felt all warm and fuzzy. He had spirit! He was a fighter! He had an irrepressible will to live! Did he? Perhaps. He never said, but because we loved him we just knew that everything noble, wise and shining was in him. Or as the Liberal Death Star (the New York Times put it “a vivid presence that was so much more visible to us because it happened to belong to a winner.” Where have I heard words like that before?

Similarly, those who swoon at the sight of Senator Beefcake can find in his ponderous, ambiguous statements about serious issues whatever they want to hear. The shame that was Katrina isn’t about race, except that it is. He is a devout Christian who is proud of his brother’s conversion to Islam. He is black, except when he’s thinking of himself as a “half breed.”

Liberals have a well-known propensity for adopting mascots and purporting to speak for them. If they literally can’t speak for themselves (inanimate objects like trees, animals), all the better. Now they have applied this standard to the man that I call He Who Walks on Water and what one commentator called the emptiest of empty suits who is no doubt delighted to see his political fortunes fueled by blind adulation and the gusher of white guilt that makes it unnecessary to him to clarify what he really thinks, and his real agenda for this country. Come to think of it, we would be better off with Mr. Ed.

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