News | Sunday, 28 December 2008

PRINT THIS ARTICLE

Change they believed in

The global euphoria to greet the US election result was as much a celebration of Obama’s victory, as a collective sigh of relief at the end of the controversial Bush regime. RAPHAEL VASSALLO looks back on the year when America finally renounced her former convictions

There can be little doubt about it; 2009 was the year of Obama. From his nomination as Democrat Presidential candidate in June – after a visceral clash with Hillary Clinton that left the party bruised and bleeding – to a gruelling election campaign which elevated him to quasi-legendary status, the 47-year-old Illinois senator has come to represent a thirst for change which transcends the immediate boundaries of the US political divide.
And as his victory speech reverberated from Washington to Brussels to Nairobi to Beijing, it was clear that the election of America’s first ever non-white President had somehow hit a nerve among the world at large; as much for the fairy-tale quality of its rags-to-riches implications, as for the sudden evocation of a realistic vision for global change.
Son of a first-generation Nigerian immigrant and a white mother from the Mid West, Barack Hussein Obama himself embodied a “new” America that has slowly been growing, unobserved, on the sidelines. Far from the unique preserve of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, this America is a nation of largely underprivileged immigrants – black, white, Asian and Latino, all brought together by varying degrees of miscegenation – whose middle class aspirations have routinely been sidelined or ignored by successive administrations of US government.
Unlike any Presidential hopeful in recent years, Obama staked his claim to the White House precisely by speaking to them in their own language. And coming from such a visibly different breed of candidate, his rhetoric of change was at once both credible and enervating: two qualities which neither Al Gore nor John Kerry quite managed to project in their own Presidential campaigns of 2000 and 2004 respectively.
And yet, Obama’s triumph in November cannot be attributed uniquely to his own persona. For 2008 was also a year in which previously unchallenged ideologies came crashing down about our ears: when the free market economic model visibly teetered, and all but collapsed altogether; and when – despite the evident success of the “surge” strategy in Iraq – public opinion finally swung away from the belligerent doctrines of the Bush-Cheney tandem, and acknowledged the need for a general rethink of America’s role in the world.
All of this proved fertile ground for Obama’s tireless battle-cry... and like the best in election-winning messages, his was as simple as it was direct.
Change was needed, and Obama could deliver.

Bumbling Republicans
Added to the power of this message was the apparent lack of any counterbalancing strategy on the part of the Republicans. Just as Obama enthused an unprecedented number of young, first-time voters through an extensive (and expensive) media campaign, his GOP rival proved incapable of shaking off the unpopular legacy with which he had been saddled by the incumbent President.
In many respects, this can be attributed to a series of sensational own goals scored by Senator John McCain himself, as he struggled to assert his presence in the face of an evident anti-Republican media bias. It seemed for a while that he couldn’t put a single foot right: everything he did – from his suggestion to “suspend the campaign” in view of the financial crisis, to his apparent chickening out of a live interview with David Letterman – somehow blew up in his face: consolidating the image of an honest but ultimately unreliable ditherer, and providing endless comic material for an increasingly merciless Saturday Night Live.
Even his choice of running mate proved with hindsight to be a self-inflicted handicap. Initially, Sarah Palin’s curious combination of “hockey mom” sex appeal with gun-toting, redneck conservatism did give a much-needed shot of insulin to McCain’s otherwise tired campaign. But the outspoken Alaskan governor quickly alienated moderate voters with her erratic and often unstable televised interviews; and with her personal attacks on Obama as a closet Muslim who “palled around with terrorists”, she even managed to put off moderates in the Republican camp.
Perhaps the last straw came when a pair of Canadian radio comics managed to breach the Republican defences and get through to Palin live on air – pretending to be French President Nicolas Sarkozy. In what quickly became an international YouTube sensation, Palin was unable to conceal her childlike fascination with icons of the world stage; and, combined with her bubbly gullibility, the hoax phone call effectively quashed any notion that “President Palin” might be taken seriously in the near future.
In any case, the election outcome was by then all but a formality, and to their credit both John McCain and Sarah Palin bowed out honourably when the time came... with the former treating his world audience to a text-book illustration of grace in defeat.
The world watches
With hindsight, it now appears almost inevitable that – a few weeks before the President-elect is even sworn in – Barack Hussein Obama already faces a critical backlash among his own supporters.
Foremost among the bones of contention was the nomination of his own former rival (and erstwhile First Lady) Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. One could argue that Obama was faced with little choice, given that the nomination struggle had exposed such a deep-rooted divide within the Democrat party. Furthermore Clinton’s enormous experience on the world stage was not an asset that could lightly be brushed aside.
But coming so hard on the promise of meaningful change, the return to the fold of the Clinton dynasty was quickly interpreted as a sign that the promised “change” would in reality be a good deal less far-reaching than many had hoped.
It remains to be seen whether the Obama phenomenon will simply fizzle out like so many other political fantasies, as the young President comes to grips with the forces of realpolitik that have defined his country’s modus operandi for generations.
For the moment, however, he has yet to hang the new drapes in the Oval Office... still less “change the world”, as promised.

Any comments?
If you wish your comments to be published in our Letters pages please click button below.
Please write a contact number and a postal address where you may be contacted.