"America rejoins the world" and "The return of America" are two of the most apt descriptions of the historic and momentous election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States (US) and the leadership of what is called the 'Free World'.
For over the past seven years The United States has been captured by a right-wing cabal of neo-conservatives, who have virtually turned it into a rogue state, threatening the foundations of liberal internationalism which that country had helped to build through Woodrow Wilson and others.
The international community welcomes the return of the US to the norms of good international behaviour and decency and says good riddance to a Bush administration whose arrogance and sense of entitlement have squandered America's respect all over the world.
Obama
Barack Obama will be far more effective as a leader of the democratic world than he will be as manager of the domestic US economy. The working and middle classes will be disappointed for Barack Obama will not pose the kind of challenge to big business and the American ruling class which his rhetoric suggests.
reading the waves
The military-industrial complex will remain in place. Make no mistake about it, concessions will be extracted for ordinary Americans, for the capitalist class has always been adept at reinventing itself and accommodating shifting tides.
McCain and the Republican Party lost because they failed to read the waves and make the course corrections. Important sections of the economic elite, including people like Warren Buffet recognised that the Republican Party has damaged the capitalist brand and that only someone with the charisma, magnetic personal appeal and attractiveness to various classes, interest groups and constituencies, can save the system.
Obama is no leftist or socialist, as he has been branded by the right and as the progressives have reminded. He is a hard-nosed pragmatist, though one certainly driven by certain ideals. He is a post-ideological, post-racial, post-modernist leader - and that is precisely the kind of leader whom people who are hungering for change in America want. The victory of Obama, who deliberately and strategically played down and transcended race to capture his broad alliance of ethnic groups, interests and classes, is a lesson in psychological warfare.
Bush
brilliant campaign
The Obama campaign was simply brilliant and Obama himself possesses extraordinary leadership skills. Not just any black man could reach the White House. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, even with the crash of Wall Street and the repugnance of George W. Bush, could not have done it. It took someone of the political and leadership genius of Barack Obama - and someone with his temperament and emotional intelligence skills - to pull off what one leader in France called, referring to Neil Armstrong, "A giant step for mankind" - particularly for a significant segment who have been dehumanised, oppressed and marginalised for centuries.
Tuesday was a watershed for the world. It strengthens the view that perhaps, after all, there is something called American Exceptionalism, which has been debated in the scholarly literature; perhaps there is something unique about America as a 'Great Power'; something distinctive, something different from previous empires and present and emerging 'Great Powers'.
My favourite news interviewer, the late Tim Russert used to say of America, "What a country!" Despite all its liberal and sometimes left-leaning rhetoric and ethos, Europe is nowhere near to electing any racial minority to its top political post. America has done it.
Even those of us who have been critical of US foreign policy over the years - and a foreign policy injurious to the Third World has not been limited to Republican administrations - must give credit to the American people and to their intensely democratic and egalitarian ethos and ideals - especially when we see autocracies like China and Russia in ascendancy; and when Islamic fanaticism and authoritarianism present themselves as an alternative to "Western decadence". America again proved on Tuesday that it can, indeed, be a "Shining City on a Hill".
Cheney
world respect
Without Barack Obama doing one thing, the world has overnight, literally, changed its opinion of America. There is a respect, an honour, a credibility which has returned to America simply with the election of Barack Obama and the ending of the Bush presidency, which McCain would have continued.
America's soft power has returned and America is more powerful today than George Bush and his group of neo-conservatives could ever have dreamed of in their obsession with hard power. From the time of the Project for a New American Century and the preparation of that infamous Defence Planning Guidance strategic document which outlined the neo-conservatives vision of American dominance in the world, a dark cloud has hung over America.
That dark cloud has been removed, ironically, with the election a black man.
All internationalists and those who believe in a rules-based international order welcome Barack Obama's election. Unilateralism can now be replaced by multilateralism and liberal internationalism. America can now ratify those treaties which the Bush administration has scorned and arrogantly snubbed its nose at the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the treaty governing about the International Criminal Court. (Though Obama will be treading cautiously) American can return to respecting the Geneva Convention and seeing itself as bound by international law. more powerful
Harvard Professor Joseph Nye, known for his scholarly work on soft power, has for long demonstrated the power of America's values and ideals and how that soft power strengthens its power in the international community.
People like Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and previously even Colin Powell himself had no interest in that; drunk with America's post-Cold War hyper-power. Barack Obama can now truly pursue the humble foreign policy that George Bush promised when he was elected in 2000.
America is more powerful and influential today without adding one cent to the military budget or without violating another country's territorial integrity. Even if Barack Obama fails to be the transformational leader he promises to be nationally - and the expectations of him are so high as to set up people for deep disillusionment - he will have a major impact on global politics.
But some commentary about him has been more wishful and fanciful than analytical. Barrack Obama is no Noam Chomsky, Chalmers Johnson or Ralph Nader when it comes to national defines. He has voted for big increases in military sending and takes a hard line on Afghanistan and Pakistan - even making statements about being willing to go into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists. He has heavy support among American Jews and has spoken strongly in favour of Israel.
Obama panders to protectionist interests in the United States and has talked about renegotiating North American Free Trade Area. I believe he will moderate his position now that he has won power, but he had to do some playing to the gallery to woo working-class support as well as professionals who have seen their jobs exported to Asia.
To reach the White House he has had to market himself as a consensual, non-partisan, non-ideological candidate bent on change, but a non-dogmatic change. Unlike many progressives who are hard on him, I remind that politics is the art of the possible and while one should not sacrifice integrity for expedient political gain, one has to be "wise as serpents as harmless as doves" in achieving political goals.
turning point election
It makes no sense speaking with the stridency and radicalism of Ralph Nader, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, and being marginalised and scorned by big media while entrenched interests continue to oppress ordinary people. Forge the alliances, tap into the needs and yearnings of the various constituencies and get the power and then be in a position to change things rather than hold court outside the halls of power, with all the radical talk in the world that changes nothing; while the marginalised continue to suffer.
This was a turning-point election. Class issues trumped cultural issues. Bread-and-butter concerns took precedence over values issues such as abortion, gay marriage and Church-State relations-on which Obama is more liberal than McCain. Jamaicans in their euphoria might not have heard it, but in his victory speech Obama hailed gays along with other minorities in talking of his inclusive vision for America. Interestingly, Obama captured 53 per cent of the Catholic vote, a 13-point swing from 2004. Also, Obama cut in half the Republican advantage among Protestants.
Obama also won 44 per cent of these who attended church regularly, a 19-point shift in that category, leading analysts to revise their previous notion of the "God gap" between Democrats and Republicans.
strengthened appeal
Obama's own embodiment of the diversity and complexities of America also strengthened his appeals: He has a black father and a white mother; he has roots in Africa as well as in Americas; He is an Ivy league, Harvard-trained professional, who has experience in the working-class communities of Chicago; he rails against Washington insiders, but chose as his running mate one of the most-experienced and long-standing ones, Joe Biden; his rhetoric is powerful and moving against fat cats and the wealthy Wall Street billionaires, but has Warren Buffet close by his side. He is a passionate advocate of the middle class, but was able to outspend the white Establishment candidate McCain four-to-one.
That 75 per cent of the country said America was heading in the wrong direction when McCain was saying "the fundamentals of the economy are sound", and when Bush's popularity rating was down to an abysmal 20 per cent helped to cement Obama's victory. Obama has done brilliantly but he has been helped considerably by Bush and fortuitous economic circumstances. The financial meltdown took place at just the right time for Obama.
Marx was rights; Economic issues are primary and in the end people voted on bread rather than on guns or God, and Obama ended up getting 43 per cent of the white vote, even more than the white man John Kerry in 2004.
The world experienced another revolution last week. And I am glad to be alive to have witnessed it.
Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist who may be reached at ianboyne1@yahoo.com or columns@gleanerjm.com