Simon Jenkins guardian.co.uk, Friday November 7 2008
The world wept with joy on Tuesday night. Probably more such tears were shed than in all history. The reason was not that a Democrat had beaten a Republican, or that the new man is young and has a gift for turning banality into rhetoric. The emotion was because Barack Obama is black.
I too wept, but I did so because the massive hope loaded on to Obama seems so naive and cannot be justified. The election of this man, mesmeric since I first heard of him in Illinois four years ago and read his memoir, may symbolise the advance of a once-oppressed group of Americans, and by proxy of non-whites the world over. But embracing someone for where he comes from rather than for what he may do has been the hubris of politics throughout history. No service is done to Obama by overstating his revolution as a second coming.
The most overheard media cliche is that "America will never be the same again". Yes it will, as it was when it last elected a Democratic president. Only if we break from the crypto-racist mindset that sees Obama as a black man first and all else far behind can the odds on a successful presidency be assessed.
The election result reflected a normal pendulum swing to a conventional Democrat, as is likely in time of unpopular war and economic distress. Nothing in George Bush's wretched term of office became him like the leaving of it: he made Obama's succession inevitable. The heroes of the campaign were the primary voters, who had put up Obama rather than Hillary Clinton to win the proffered palm.
Obama's 52% of the vote was not a landslide. It was the distortions of an electoral college system that served (as in the House of Commons) to turn an unexceptional four-point swing into an apparently overwhelming victory.
The race spin being put on the result is quite wrong. The percentage of black people among those voting on Tuesday was up just two points, from 11 to 13%. Within the white electorate, Obama actually increased the Democratic share. The reported prominence of "the economy" in the minds of voters, against "security" in 2004, gave a natural boost to the Democratic vote. Add the unpopularity of the Iraq war, McCain's reckless choice of running mate, and Obama's brilliant campaign technique to get out his vote, and there is reason enough for the winning Democrat margin.
Nor is Obama the salvationist figure assumed by many abroad. Tuesday was no black insurgency. The victory speech contained not one reference to his racial background. That ageing American icon, Jesse Jackson, hated Obama until Tuesday night. He was no son of slavery. Indeed the fascination of his memoir lies in the search by a member of an all-white family for an explanation of the colour of his skin.
The new president is better seen as a classic American mix of freebooting immigrant and poor but educated mother, committed to a college education for her son. His story could be that of any president of Scots/Irish descent, rising through law school to emerge as the smoothly intellectual liberal derided by the Clintons during the campaign. Constant references to his colour obscure his real strengths and possible weaknesses.
The one gain to Obama from the hysteria that has greeted his election will come if he can convert it into something politically bankable. He will - such is politics - soon be campaigning for re-election. The Republicans may go through contortions of self-examination, but their party is hardly finished. Evangelical conservatism - political and economic as well as religious - is not dead. Opponents will be prowling Congress and the airwaves, waiting to pounce on each Obama setback.
Obama's popularity must be deployed early to give the conservative Washington machine, awash in interests and lobbies, the momentum it needs to "effect change". Bush's adoption of Keynesian remedialism was welcome, but was not enough to save the economy (and himself) from recession. Obama must no longer pander to an army of grimly implacable unions, farmers, cartels, businesses and traders demanding satisfaction.
Americans have elected a leader not just for themselves but for a wide swath of peoples around the world. They cried out for Obama and America granted them their wish. But the greater the expectation of this man, the more furious will be the backlash if he proves a disappointment.
There is a global detritus of American ineptitude and unpopularity to be cleared. The blundering mammoth that is America's global military projection must be curbed. Intelligence must return to foreign relations. Obama could indicate a start by closing Guantánamo Bay on day one. Will he?
Dare he stop torture, accept the Geneva conventions, get tough with Israel, change policy on Russia, make peace with Iran? He has promised to get out of Iraq and fast. But he must also unleash a ferocious pragmatism as "war creep" envelopes Afghanistan, and stop making puerile pledges to invade Pakistan and bomb border villages.
Pakistan was visited this week by a man poised to hold the leading role in the Obama presidency, General David Petraeus. It has taken Washington seven years to realise that the keys to the gates of Kabul lie in Islamabad. But that merely indicates how catastrophic it would be for Obama to continue the belligerent campaign line towards that theatre. The region cries out for the quality most lacking in Republican diplomacy, subtlety.
Afghanistan could yet be to Obama what Vietnam was to the last great civil rights champion in the White House, Lyndon Johnson. All Democratic presidents eager for re-election find it easiest to buy popularity and a macho image by acting belligerently abroad. Obama has yet to indicate that he is an exception to the rule.
An early test will be his response to the extraordinary sabre-rattling by the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev. Medvedev's proposal to station missiles in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad between Poland and Lithuania is a crude reaction to George Bush's location of defence installations in a number of former Warsaw pact countries. It is so clearly a challenge to Obama's resolve that it demands an immediate reply. The opportunity is for a classic show of firmness combined with an openness to negotiate. Kaliningrad could yet be Obama's Cuban missile crisis - the geographical parallel is eerily similar - before he has even taken office.
The exhilaration of the past week has been palpable. I have lost count of the Americans who have said with relief: "I am tired with being hated everywhere I go. Suddenly I am loved." The moment is Rooseveltian. At a time of seeming ubiquitous misery, America not for the first time has pulled an iron from the fire. It has found a messiah.
But I still prefer to see Obama not as a black man but as a talented leader of evident competence and sagacity who could use his charisma to bind people together, and his intelligence to chart a way forward. These are the specific qualities the world needs now. We should place our faith in them and not in race or colour.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment