Obama '08?

Resorting to the proverbial crystal ball is always a risky exercise. The future has the maddening habit of always frustrating our most informed speculations. But, dear reader, fools rush in where angels fear to tread! It seems to me that there are about three things that we can say with reasonable certainty about the American elections of 2008. First, the Bush-Cheney era will, mercifully, draw to a close. Second, the task facing their successors will be enormous and multi-faceted. Analagous in many ways to a Herculean labour (I think the cleaning of the Augean stables is the apposite one here): frayed alliances have to be mended and an urgent effort has to be made to restore America's good name. The third and perhaps related postulate to be made is that the issue-environment is spectacularly to the advantage of the Democratic Party. Indeed, the nominee of that party ought to be a prohibitive favourite against whichever candidate emerges from the Republican dunghill.
Enter the intelligent, telegenic Junior Senator from Illinois. Barack Obama comes from a compelling and improbable background. The son of a Muslim Kenyan father and a White American Mother, Obama spent his formative years in Indonesia and Hawaii before going on to an illustrious academic career which saw him being selected as the first Afro-American editor of the Harvard Law Review. Most people, with such a credential on their resume, would have beat a hurried path to a career with one of the big law firms with a life of enormous remuneration and attendant luxury in prospect. The Senator was cut from different cloth. While he did summer at such a firm, where he met his formidable wife Michelle, he went on to be a civil rights attorney and activist as well as a municipal and state politician. When he emerged as the Democratic candidate for an Illinois Senate seat, Obama had the good fortune of seeing his Republican opponent's candidacy implode in the throes of a messy divorce. At the last minute the GOP parachuted in a highly controversial black Republican called Alan Keyes, who turned out to be no competition at all. The only remarkable feature of this campaign was Barack Obama's strongly stated opposition to the Iraq war at a time when more senior Democrats were falling over themselves to ensure that they could not be portrayed as being 'unpatriotic'. In his short time in the Senate, Obama showed himself to be a deft operator, able to work across the aisles and get things done. His status as a political shooting star probably began with his speech to the Democratic Convention in 2004, but it reached a crescendo with an appearance that he made on the Oprah show in 2006. It was here that we saw that he had begun to think of making a run at the White House. Oprah was unbridled in her enthusiasm for such a move, and has become a vital backer of his. His candidacy, launched with substantial echoes of Lincoln, has been marked by a huge amount of enthusiasm and a spectacular ability to raise money. Obama has articulated a vision of a new politics in which positive appeals ought to trump character assassination. Facing interest groups, the Senator has not shied away from speaking frankly, abandoning the ususal political practice of pandering furiously. Teachers groups have been told that there are needs for greater accountability and higher standards, Black groups have been told of the need to prioritise education and of the need for increased responsibility on the part of parents. In short, this candidacy appears to be the substantiation of a dream, Bobby Kennedy reborn. Of course, RFK was trailing the front-runner in the 1968 Democratic race. This is the position that Obama finds himself in vis-a-vis Hilary Clinton. She enjoys a substantial lead over him and competes strongly with Obama for the black vote, where he is hurt both by his aforementioned frankness and a preposterous and abiding view that he is not really 'black'. Her particular asset has been the 'experience' card. This has been a real difficulty for Obama to overcome and has led him to make intemperate remarks, such as his stated willingness to attack terrorists located in Pakistan. His inability to sew up the black vote and the simmering tensions between blacks and latinos, which make it highly problematic for a black candidate to get a substantial portion of the hispanic vote, are all huge obstacles for Obama to overcome. Another difficulty which faces him is of his own making. In announcing himself as a proponent of a new, enlightened form of politics, he makes the necessary task of drawing unflattering contrasts between himself and his opponents all the more difficult. The minute he attempts to do so, his own earlier words are thrown back at him. How he manouevres out of this strait-jacket will go a long way towards determining whether he can close the gap with Mrs. Clinton. There are other unseen factors that are yet to make themselves known. How will his race factor in? The history in America has been of people telling pollsters of their willingness to support minority candidates and of their voting patterns ultimately revealing a contrary stance. It is my sincere hope that he manages to pull this off. He would represent a refreshing break from the dynastic slug-fest between the Bushes and the Clintons. And his biography, in and of itself, suggests that he might be that rarest of Americans who, despite mouthing the typical rubbish about American singularity, might actually have an understanding of the basic humanity of us all. This is really important as the American President, in some real sense, is actually the head of the world. Readers, your views?