Just as America was losing its global leadership after its failed economic policies dragged the whole world in the worst recession in 80 years, the American people managed to fire global imagination by electing the son of a Kenyan immigrant as their commander-in-chief. JAMES DEBONO on the revival of the American dream

Ironically, after an electoral campaign in which Obama was deemed “un-American” by Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, America has finally re-discovered its soul as a melting pot of nations and cultures.
This election proved once and for all that the “American heartland”, composed largely of white rural evangelical voters, is in reality just one of many Americas.
For America is a veritable hotchpotch of puritans and pornographers, pacifists and rednecks, gays and bigots, rodeo cowboys and latte liberals.
Moreover, in its history America has not just dominated the rest of the world by shock and awe. It has also inspired millions by the dreams of its civil rights leaders and counter-culture icons.
We all grew up listening to American music and watching American films, which present a way of life cut off from the small town America enthusiastically evoked by Palin (and reluctantly by John McCain, who never seemed at ease with the conservative trust of the Republican campaign).
And amidst the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, Americans were not in the mood for the divisive culture wars invoked by Sarah Palin in her attempt to lure the conservative working class vote in pivotal states like Pennsylvania.
For in Obama, voters saw the power of an ideal which unites them, the power of the American dream: the idea that everyone, regardless of his background, can make it to the very top.
By electing the son of a Kenyan foreign student and a white American woman from Kansas, who spent his childhood in Muslim Indonesia after his parents’ divorce, the American people proved that there was some truth in this undying myth.
For in a country were 47 million people are not even covered by health insurance and where people sell their own home to pay their health bills, the American dream remains a myth.
The collapse of the financial system, which saw millions losing their homes, further exposed the gap between the dream and the reality.
Obama’s legacy will be measured by his ability to reduce this gap by ‘spreading the wealth’, and reversing past policies of offering tax cuts for only the top 5% of Americans.
With firm control of both Senate and Congress, Obama has no excuse for not delivering on his pledge to insure all American children, and henceforth all Americans.
Obama’s pledge is still a far cry from Europe’s single payer health schemes, but it remains a big difference in direction for the millions of uninsured Americans.
For although the two American parties might be described as different factions of the “business party”, as linguist Noam Chomsky likes to call them, the differences between Obama and McCain had major consequences on the lives of working people.
Despite the limits imposed by a two-party system, Obama stood out in these elections as a transformational candidate – a quality attributed to Obama by the Republican former secretary of state, Colin Powell.
Now Obama’s greatest challenge is to become a transformational leader in the same way as Ronald Reagan – the man who convinced Americans to roll government off their backs in the 1980s.
The charismatic former Hollywood actor had ushered in a global era of militant conservatism, which changed the fabric of American society while inspiring fellow travellers in Europe like Britain’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Now it’s Obama’s time to transform America. Hopefully it will be a gentler, wiser and fairer America which leads the world to fight poverty and global climate change.
Surely, in the process he is bound to disappoint. Special interest groups will no doubt prevail. And he might even be tempted to flex his muscles in Afghanistan and Pakistan, to prove his worth as commander in chief.
A risk exists that Obama will simply try to accommodate special interests by striking a middle course between the Democratic centre and the Republican right wing.
Unlike Bill Clinton, Obama will be lucky not to face a Congress controlled by conservative Republicans who went as far as trying to impeach him for lying on a small, intimate detail of his private life.
Despite failing to leave his mark on any fundamental reform, Clinton owed his popularity to presiding over a decade of economic prosperity and peaceful co-existence between the many different Americas.
But unlike Clinton, Obama does not have the economy in his favour. He only has the fundamental advantage of having a democratic majority in both Congress and Senate, and an inspiring programme of change.
Yet retaining that majority in two years’ time would be a major challenge in a country where Congress is expected to hold the President in check.
The fear of unleashing a mid-term Republican rebellion, like the Newt Gingrich revolt in the early Clinton days, could well keep Obama in a conciliatory mode.
But if he fails to steer the social reforms many Republicans oppose, Obama risks being written off by history as a latter-day Jimmy Carter.
Carter’s “peanut farmer from the plains” simplicity captivated a country whose pride was deeply bruised by Nixon’s Watergate scandal and defeat in Vietnam.
Yet as President, Carter is generally dismissed as an abject failure under whose leadership America lost steam and global leadership.
On the other hand Obama could well go down in history as America’s second Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the only American President who redistributed wealth by embarking on the so-called ‘New Deal’ which introduced some elements of the European welfare state in the USA.
For the American public is no longer scared shitless of the European social model. If they were, they would have heeded McCain’s dire warnings about what will happen to America under “Barack the Redistributor”: a nickname coined after the Democratic candidate’s exchange with Joe the Plumber in which he spoke of his wish to “spread the wealth around”.
In any previous election of the past 40 years this would probably have been enough to sink Obama’s campaign, but the depth of the financial crisis has shocked American voters to the core.
At a time when the State has become the last line of defence against the threat of full-scale economic collapse, it is no longer credible to argue, as Ronald Reagan did, “government is the problem”.
For Americans contemplating the prospect of home repossession and unemployment – including the loss of coveted health insurance – the idea of government intervention holds a new attraction.
One thing is certain. Obama poses a dilemma for those Europeans who loved to hate George Bush’s America.
For he might well be an inspiration for a moribund European left, which has lost the magic touch to inspire a weary electorate.
Most likely in the next decade we will see the advent of a new anti-Americanism, expressed by populist xenophobic parties resisting globalisation in the name of national identities.
But if Europe and America manage to strike a new multilateral partnership to combat the challenges posed by climate change and poverty, even globalisation could be redeemed.
It all depends on whether Obama will seize the moment, and deliver on his promise of change. It will also depend on how vigilant the progressive movement will be to ensure that Obama keeps his promise of change.

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