Ray, people will come, Ray. They'll come to Iowa for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn up your driveway not knowing for sure why they're doing it. They'll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past.

…It reminds us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh, people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come.

-Terence Mann (James Earl Jones), in “Field of Dreams” 

Everyone in the media seems puzzled by the “Restoring Honor” rally.  “What’s it all about?” they’re asking.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans gathered in Washington.  They came because Glenn Beck asked them to, without ever telling them precisely why.

“This really is build it and they will come,” Mr. Beck said in his opening comments, fighting to hold back tears.

And they sure did come, in massive numbers.  Ray Kinsella’s Field of Dreams got nothin’ on Glenn Beck’s.

Time Magazine couldn’t figure out why all those people came.  There didn’t seem to be any single issue, agenda or outrage that connected all those rally participants.  Salon’s Mark Benjamin sounded a bit quizzical as to what united the crowd, with its “strong but vague feelings”.

Even Chris Wallace of Fox News, who scored the only post-rally interview with Mr. Beck, struggled to characterize the rally, and Glenn Beck himself. 

“I’m trying to figure you out,” Mr. Wallace said.  “In the 40 years that I’ve been in this business, I have to say I’ve never seen anybody quite like you. You’re not a newsman, you’re not a preacher, you’re not a politician… What are you?”

And all this confusion is understandable, because Mr. Beck never made it clear – either in advance, or at the rally itself – what the whole thing was about.

He spoke at length and with passion about God, and the need for Americans to restore the role of God in their lives.  He even hinted that something big – something supernatural - was in progress there on the Mall in Washington.

“Something beyond imagination is happening. Something that is beyond Man is happening.  America today begins to turn back to God,” he said.

Then Mr. Beck spoke of heroes, and how much we need them.“We have lost too many heroes in this nation.   Heroes are just people who stand and do the right thing, usually at their own peril,” he told us.  

With this, he segued into an interesting and affecting segment on the military.

“What is it today that America truly believes in?  We have very little trust in most of our institutions.  But there is one thing that still is 15 points higher – at the top of the list on things America trusts: our military.”

Next, he introduced John T. Carney, Junior, the President of the Special Operations Warrior Foundation (SOWF), which raises money and provides for the families of special forces personnel killed in action.  The next speaker was the mother of a lost Air Force special operations officer, who had a very personal, very touching story to tell.

The emotions of the huge crowd were palpable and very real.  When Mr. Beck asked people to text a $10 donation to the SOWF, mobile phones appeared in the thousands.

Sarah Palin joined Mr. Beck’s rally and spoke, she said, not as a politician, but as a mother who had “raised a combat vet.”

And the crowd listened respectfully, and they cheered in the right places.  And when it was all over, they went home.  They went home without a specific task or assignment.  None of them, nor any reporters, seemed to be able to say what the rally was all about.  But I think it’s very clear.

This certainly was not a Republican rally.  Mr. Beck was quite sweeping in dismissing all politics, existing institutions, and both parties.

It wasn’t a Tea Party rally, nor a Sarah Palin rally – though they were both co-opted for a purpose.

It wasn’t a support-the-military rally – though Mr. Beck did want to tie himself to the deep and broad respect and support for the military in this country.

And it wasn’t even a religious rally, steeped though it was in exhortations and incantations.

The rally was about Glenn Beck.  Period.  The mediator is the message.

Mr. Beck is placing himself, personally, at the center of a vague, inchoate, but potentially powerful movement.  A populist identification and alignment.  He is gathering people.  People who are unsettled, unhappy and worried about much of what they see in America, and in their own lives.  People who are well-primed not to look for answers through traditional politics, politicians and political institutions.

Republicans have done some of the work.  They have successfully undercut the credibility of the President and his administration.  The Tea Party and Sarah Palin have done some of the work.  They have decoupled a nascent populist movement from the established political process.

At the “Restoring Honor” rally, Glenn Beck tacitly proclaimed something important.  That he is bigger than any of them.  It was Glenn Beck who made those hundreds of thousands of Americans gather in Washington, without knowing for sure why they were doing it.

They were doing it for Glenn Beck.

They came because he asked them to.  They were beckoned by a man who is certain that today’s America is irredeemably broken.  A man who feels so deeply about this certainty – and also his certainty that America can be restored – that he can barely control his emotions.  A man with the passion of a messiah.

The rally was about Glenn Beck, his cultural and political influence and power.  Where things go now, we don’t know.  But this was a big step toward something.  To borrow from Buffalo Springfield, there’s something happening here, and what it is ain’t exactly clear.