What has set Barack Obama apart from his opposition and what has made him the political messiah of the young and old alike is not simply his ability to give a great speech. Instead it is the feeling behind Barack Obama’s words that has captured the hearts of so many.

Obama offers hope and with the master stroke of an artist he paints for America a new dream, the dream of a better tomorrow, a tomorrow when we will live in a country where we can all get along. These are not just words, he says in an emotion-filled voice. We can do this, he promises, together yes we can.

Many have been mesmerized by America’s newest savior. So it is that when it was discovered that some of his most eloquent words given in a recent speech weren’t his, the balloon of Obama’s ascendancy suffered a prick and the story became the subject of discussion in and on every news outlet.

As always, those enraptured by Senator Obama came to his defense for having used the words of his political cousin the Governor of Massachusetts Deval Patrick without attribution. The Clinton Campaign who started the assault by calling the words in question “plagiarism,” were naturally “horrified” to learn that a politician would stoop so low as to pass off someone else’s words as  his own.

Hillary Clinton sent her talking surrogates out to make her point on the cable news shows, Obama’s sent his to defend, and the biased media pretty much gave the Senator a pass - though not a complete pass. This was the first assault of any kind on the Teflon candidate to gain legs.

It’s a big deal, some said. No big deal, said others. Obama, with an arrogant shrug of his shoulders, brushed the brouhaha away calling his use of Deval Patrick’s words without attribution, “No big deal.”

But it is a big deal and for many reasons. First, because if the words aren’t his than neither is the message. Second, it turns out that Obama’s campaign is nothing but a retread of Deval Patrick’s campaign for the Massachusetts Governorship. The something new and different Obama candidate isn’t something new and different at all.

Barack Obama's campaign has nothing to do with new ideas; his candidacy is about a winning strategy. Hope, dreams, yes we can was the winning formula for Deval Patrick created by Obama and Patrick's mutual political guru, David Axelrod. Now Obama hopes they will be his winning formula, too.

No original ideas here, no heartfelt design, just lofty speeches disguising the voice of old politics delivered by a Patrick follower - not a new American leader.

Couched in the meme of his campaign launched under the title of his memoir, The Audacity of Hope makes the falsity of Mr. Obama’s shadowing Governor Patrick’s ideas an unspeakable deception, a travesty on the collective American consciousness.

It is a blister on the American soul to discover that Senator Obama is formulaically playing to the lowest common denominator of human nature: the abject need of people to latch onto someone who might free them from their misery.

Hope is defeated by design before it ever has a chance to flourish. There is nothing remotely messianic about political narcissism particularly when America becomes a pawn in a cold, calculating political chess game with the goal for Obama to win.

At least in the Clinton brand of politics America has always known where it stands. Ruthless deception so adequately played by Senator Obama has been hard to discern. Once discovered, it is excruciating to assimilate.

But to know the truth about the inauthentic Obama, however painful, sooner rather than later, will help America to avoid falling prey to illusion as it did with George W. Bush.  

In enlightenment lies the real hope for America's best and brightest future. Let's hope that the knowing won't be assimilated too late.