As so it came to pass that ‘a skinny kid with funny name” – son of a Kenyan man and a Caucasian woman from Kansas - defied conventional wisdom, pundits, critics and the burden of color to become the 44th president of the United States.
A country exhausted after
Barrington Salmon
years of lies, deceit and distortions, two disastrous wars, a moribund economy, anger and derision from outside and nothing but hardship and sacrifice ahead, turned its tired eyes to a man untried and untested on such a grand national stage.
So when on the night of 04 Nov, news outlets announced that Barack Obama had secured the critical 270 Electoral College votes and would be president-elect, Americans and supporters elsewhere began to rejoice in a manner usually reserved for Carnival, a bashment or a raucous, no-holds-barred street party.
No one seems to remember a time – at least in the past 60 years – when the elevation of one person to the position of US president elicited more raw emotion, palpable joy, and sense of hope and renewal.
“It's immediately transformative. It immediately changes the level of discussion,” said Richmond, Virginia Mayor and former Virginia Governor L. Doug Wilder. “This thing is bigger than we thought it was. It's too big to get our arms around, and it grows exponentially each passing day. It sets us on a brand-new course."
Obama’s elevation to the presidency over John McCain sparked euphoria, tears, spontaneous eruptions of celebration, arms raised to the heavens in thanksgiving, dancing in the streets.
And it wasn’t just in America that people were transfixed once the polls closed and votes began to be tallied. Everyone, it appears, was enthralled by this uniquely American quadrennial “blood sport.”
Historic. Momentous. Transformational. Stunning.
The degree of interest surrounding Barack Obama around the globe translated into thousands of foreign reporters descending on the United States, a blanket of media coverage and as one reporter noted, “(a) fascination that overrode time zones and deep-seated political apathy to keep people glued for hours to radios and televisions and computers… — all served as reminders that this really was history in the making.”
HOPE AND RENEWAL
America’s standing in the world community plummeted during George Bush’s two terms in office. In Germany, for example, polls showed that if citizens were allowed to vote in the US elections for Obama, he would have garnered about 98% of the vote. The same would have occurred in most countries with some exceptions.
The outpouring of elation and admiration felt by people overseas resembled that playing out in America. Perhaps the country most proud of Obama’s rise to power is Kenya. Despite being more than 8,000 miles and several time zones away from the US, Kenya’s distinction is that Obama’s father, Barack Obama, Sr., was a Kenyan-born economist from the village of Nyanza. In Obama’s honor, Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki declared last Thursday, 06 November a national holiday.
A steady stream of foreign leaders has called to congratulate Obama and salute the historic nature of his victory. And even now, pundits, critics and other observers fumble for the right words to encompass the nature, breadth and scope of Obama’s accomplishment.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu echoed what many feel: "We have a new spring in our walk and our shoulders are straighter,” said the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and the retired Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, who likened Obama’s victory to anti-apartheid warrior Nelson Mandela becoming South Africa’s president in 1994.
Mandela praised the victory as a sign of hope for everyone. In his statement, Mandela told Obama he expected him to "make it the mission of your presidency to combat the scourge of poverty and disease everywhere."
"We are sure you will ultimately achieve your dream of making the United States of America a full partner in a community of nations committed to peace and prosperity for all," Mandela added.
In offering his congratulations, Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding said he hoped Jamaica and other developing countries which have been left on the margins of the global agenda would “become a part of a foreign-policy framework that recognizes ‘that shared, broad-based development is the surest way to secure and maintain global prosperity and stability’.
Here in Addis Ababa, bleary-eyed Ethiopians stumbled to work after staying up all night to watch the election’s outcome. Ethiopia is eight hours ahead of America’s East Coast, so when California’s voting booths closed at 7pm Pacific Time, it was 7am, Ethiopia time. Our family was giddy with excitement, fighting back tears and marveling at the miracle that unfolded before us.
Addis residents were ecstatic. For months prior to the election, friends and strangers would routinely stop myself and my wife to ask how the elections in the US were going, if Obama was ahead in opinion polls and what if anything, could cause him to veer away from his desire to enter the White House. Deeper discussions centered on how Obama might contribute to Ethiopia and Africa’s overall development.
THE LONG WAY BACK
It is almost impossible to understand the level of expectations and the deep reservoir of goodwill that Obama currently enjoys without putting into context what has come before.
For decent, well-thinking people, the past eight years has been an American nightmare. The words to best describe the Bush Administration would be greed, over-reaching, hubris and arrogance. All of the sympathy, empathy and concern offered to the United States after commercial jetliners slammed into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon in 2001 was squandered by Bush and his cronies.
Using a new doctrine of preemptive strikes, Bush manufactured evidence of “weapons of mass destruction,” lied about the likelihood of an attack and drummed up the winds of war to a fever-pitch. Then he invaded Iraq, a sovereign nation completely innocent of any involvement in the attacks against the United States. Further, since 2001, Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have systematically stripped the American public of their basic rights, their privacy and other freedoms enshrined in the Constitution.
Bush and the Republican Party skillfully used fear of an attack by “terrorists” to frighten the public into supporting his reelection bid in 2004. Bill Clinton left a $5.6 trillion surplus but under his successor’s watch, America’s current debt has spiraled in excess of $10 trillion.
On the world scene, Bush seems to have gone of out of his way to offend friend and foe alike. When he invaded Iraq, he did so without the sanction or blessing of the United Nations and against the express opposition of governments from around the world. In fact, more than 15 million demonstrators marched in cities and capitals around the world to protest the Iraq invasion.
Because of the uninformed and wrong-headed choices Bush and Cheney have made, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, extraordinary renditions and targeted assassinations have become a part of the stock in trade of the United States.
America resorts to bombs, bullets and bullying. In recent weeks, for example, the US military has bombed targets in Syria and Pakistan and illegally entered a total of a dozen countries in its supposed search for Islamist militants.
The election was an absolute repudiation of an administration that has made “bitterness, bellicose unilateralism and illegitimate wars” the hallmarks of its legacy. It signals the time for America to return to respect for international law, to abide by the by-laws and tenets of international institutions, to embrace decency, morality and cooperation and to cease the taunts, threats and chest-thumping reminiscent of the big bully on the block.
AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE, A CORNUCOPIA OF CHALLENGES…
While being effusive in their praise, world leaders have a number of things they hope an Obama Administration will effect. They hope it will first cure America’s economic woes and then end the war in Iraq. Expectations of what foreigners hope Obama can accomplish are lofty, to say the very least.
French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner told Obama that he and others “welcome the election of a man committed to dialogue between peoples and communities and cooperation among nations.” That sentiment is reverberating around the globe.
Among Obama’s foreign tests are:
To meet the challenges of Iran, China, Russian and North Korea
To be a neutral, impartial party to Jewish-Palestinian negotiations
To extricate American service people from Iraq without causing a power-vacuum that leads to civil war.
Others hope an Obama Administration will choose not to arbitrarily attack sovereign nations or launch attacks against purported enemies; will shut down the prison in Guantanamo Bay and release those men who do not deserve to be incarcerated; will push to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and build on Bush’s Africa legacy.
I hope Obama will invest and promote Africa to help the continent become self-sufficient. I also hope that he will challenge tyrants, despots and authoritarian regimes so that Africans may taste real freedom and no longer be chained to lives marked by starvation, poverty and intimidation.
But most of all, it is my hope that he will advance a humane, progressive agenda to replace the bankrupt, immoral policies that characterize the Bush years.
Obama has made a good start by announcing his intention to rescind many of Bush’s hastily executed executive orders which are sweetening the pockets of business, mining and other interests before he goes, at the expense of the environment, the climate and working and middle-class Americans.
…AND NO TIME TO TARRY
He will have to roll up his sleeves and get to work as soon as he enters the Oval Office.
The United States’ economy is in free fall with vanishing jobs, a national housing collapse, and a credit crunch, while wars in Iraq and Afghanistan rage.
This is an America of bankruptcies, bailouts, and broken dreams. Americans remain most concerned about how to put bread on their tables; how best to counter the erosion of their earning power; the poor state of schools; and particularly ways to reverse a lawless administration which has worked relentlessly in the shadows to subvert the rule of law, unanswerable to Congress or the people it professes to serve.
Everyone is begging for help but don’t look now, the recession is coming.
Despite the looming storm clouds, Obama is instilling hope, as evidenced by the 250,000 who gathered in Grant Park in Chicago to hear the president-elect’s acceptance speech.
After years of binging, Americans appear to be ready to make the hard choices. As Alan Cowell of the International Herald Tribune noted: “Obama’s election, was and remains, a gamble by a nation convinced that it has placed its bets judiciously…”
Maybe now, America will live up to its promise. The winds of change are blowing and Black, Brown – all who seek equality and justice – continue to rejoice that this country has finally and decisively stepped across the formidable hurdle of race. Perhaps in other areas of American life, people of color will – like Obama – be judged solely on their experience, integrity and vision and lastly, the hope remains that the collective desire for change will trump color.
