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By Juan T. Gatbonton Editorial
Consultant
The Democratic primaries to
choose the party’s candidate in November’s presidential
elections has proved the effectiveness of Barack Obama’s political
strategy. At the beginning of the 10-month campaign, his chief
strategist, David Axelrod, had noted that “[t]he modern election
campaign isn’t really about the policy arcana or the candidate’s
record; it’s about a more visceral, more personal narrative.”
Obama’s hand-to-hand combat
against the formidable Hillary Clinton—herself trying to become
the first woman presidential candidate—ended in a dazzling triumph
for the Obama narrative. The telling and retelling of the
46-year-old Illinois junior senator’s life so far has generated
excitement among millions of young Americans—white as well as
black—and enticed them into taking an active interest in their
country’s politics.
The son of a black Kenyan father
and a white mother from Kansas state—whose itinerant childhood was
spent in Hawaii and Indonesia as well as in Middle America—the
charismatic Obama made his own way to Harvard law school and then to
a place in state and national politics. For his country’s
multiracial melting pot, his candidacy symbolizes America’s
vigorous ethnic diversity. Obama would be the first black in a
succession of 42 white males who have been presidents since the
founding father, George Washington, in 1789.
What kind of change?
Obama broke through centuries-old
racial barriers that have kept down black Americans, who won the
right to vote only 43 years ago. Unlike earlier black politicians
who had indulged in the rhetoric of racial grievances, Obama offers
the possibility of an America at last made whole, and at peace with
its past.
Race is likely to continue being
a divisive issue, particularly among white blue-collars.
Conservatives have historically used race as a political wedge to
divide the national electorate. But after the 10-month campaign
against an iconic family of the Democratic Party, during which both
race and gender raised political hackles, Obama will likely find the
five-month campaign against the Republican nominee, the Vietnam war
hero John McCain, easier to conduct.
Beyond his narrative, Obama has
been vague about his program of government. He has used even his
relative lack of experience to dissociate himself from the
Washington Establishment. (He has been in the American Senate for
only two years.) But he has tapped effectively into the American
demand for change. There is deep popular anger at President George
W. Bush over the Iraq war and the Republican Party’s
“serve-the-rich” economic and tax policies that have resulted in
soaring gasoline prices mortgage foreclosures and the “export”
of American low-skill jobs. The New York Times has called the two
terms of the younger Bush “the most disastrous presidency of
modern times.”
America in the world
The initial reaction in the world
to the possibility of an Obama presidency has been uniformly
favorable. After the arrogant militarism of the Bush period, Asians
expect Obama to break the ice with Iran and North Korea. While there
is likely to be no epochal shift in American foreign policy, Obama
should bring it a new energy and a tempering of its overall tone.
Over these coming years,
Washington must face up to the relative decline of the United
States, as the world’s center of gravity shifts eastward and new
powers—China, India, Brazil, Russia, the Koreas, Vietnam,
Indonesia among them—emerge from internal chaos to take their
places in the international system.
In this changing world,
America’s necessary role is to manage the power transition from an
international order essentially shaped by the West to one that
accommodates the rising powers, rewrites the rules and rebuilds the
institutions of the international system in ways that better suit
their global interests. Obama would be well-suited to this kind of
leadership role.
Can he win?
The contest with Hillary Clinton
exposed weaknesses in Obama’s political appeal. The most glaring
is his lack of support from among older white women and
working-class white males. Yet these demographic sectors are
regarded as the power base of the Democratic Party. Ironically,
McCain, too, seems weakest among the hard-core conservatives of the
Republican Party.
Both candidates must prove to
their potential voters that they are their own men. And they face
the same dilemmas: if McCain disowns Bush, he risks losing the
Republican Right; and if Obama refuses to team up with Hillary
Clinton, he risks losing her militants.
But Obama has shown his affinity
for the temper and technology of the young people whose spirit is
driving his campaign. He has skillfully used the Internet to marshal
an army of small (and repeat) donors, now nearly 1.8 million
strong—and counting.
In the end, the attraction and
the excitement generated by the Obama narrative should pay off.
McCain won the Republican nomination only because the rest of the
field had melted away, seemingly out of a loss of party energy and
spirit. But an Obama victory will confirm America in its view of
itself as the exceptional nation.
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