Obama as Dean Moriarty?

I try not to wax political here on The Daily Beat, but I found author Bill McLelland's comparison of President Obama to Dean Moriarty "blog-worthy." Click here for the full article on STLtoday.com. In it, McLelland says:

I was splashing around in Lake Michigan last week when the realization hit me like a wave — I was wrong about Barack Obama. I should have voted for Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary three years ago.

At the time of the primary, the decision seemed easy. I saw in Obama the same qualities Jack Kerouac saw in Dean Moriarty in "On the Road." He was "something new, long prophesied, long a-coming."

I'm not endorsing McLelland's view, just pointing out that Jack gets invoked by writers on virtually every topic under the sun, from politics to culture to literature to travel to clothing. It shows the universal appeal of his work.