Straight Talk
Marching forth
Photo: AFP
DON'T get me wrong. I think Hillary Clinton would make a superb president. For what it's worth, I even think that John McCain would be a significant improvement over the current occupant of the White House. Aside from his faith in America's imperial destiny, McCain is actually not that bad, as far as Republicans go. Nevertheless, neither Clinton nor McCain can do for their country and the world what I believe that Barack Obama can do. What he has the potential to do is to remake America, both in its relationship to its own citizenry and also in its relationship to the rest of the world. It is the capacity that he has to be a transformational president in the manner of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan that makes his candidacy so special. Domestically, Obama represents a new generation of liberal, unscarred by the traumas of the 1970s and 1980s, and confident both in liberalism's ability to better the lives of the American people and in the belief that Americans are ready to embrace an essentially liberal agenda for change. The older generation of liberals, personified latterly by Hillary Clinton, came of age in the 1970s and 1980s at a time when the country was swinging back towards the conservative side of the political spectrum after the tumult of the 1960s. Bill and Hillary Clinton ran Texas for George McGovern in 1972, and one can understand how dispiriting that must have been, and how that experience as well as all that followed forged their belief that America was and would remain a fundamentally conservative country, and that there were severe limits to what could be achieved politically in such a landscape. Liberals of that generation were never able to come right out and say what they truly believed on a whole range of issues for fear that it would be poison at the ballot box. To a large extent they internalised the conservative caricature of liberalism and spent their entire political careers trying to demonstrate that they were not anti-American or anti-religious as their critics charged. Their politics were, and remain, the politics of compromise and capitulation, of nibbling away at the edges, accepting the conventional wisdom, operating within the framework drawn up by the conservatives that dominated the political discourse in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. It has been a long time since there was an unabashed liberal, who was unashamed of his liberalism and eloquent in its defense, running for US president. As an eloquent and committed advocate of liberalism and liberal solutions, Obama can do for American liberalism what Ronald Reagan's presidency did for American conservatism. Hillary Clinton would make a fine president, but she wouldn't try, nor would she be able to accomplish what Obama can: create the conditions for a complete realignment of the American political landscape. Outside America, Obama's impact could be even greater. The American declaration of independence acknowledges the importance of "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind," but this fine sentiment has been all but forgotten in the America of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Indeed, although George Bush came into office promising a "humbler" foreign policy, the current administration's foreign policy, informed by the thinking of the Project for a New American Century, typifies the exact opposite. John McCain is a firm believer in America's exceptionalism and imperial destiny. He may not be as resolutely unilateral in his outlook as Bush, but the idea that America is unique and has unique rights in the world, and need not be concerned unduly by niceties such as world opinion is very much alive in his campaign rhetoric and record. Even Hillary Clinton, I do not think, has the vision or the inclination to fundamentally reshape America's relation to the rest of the world. Evidence of this is her Iraq war vote and her insistence that she would not meet with leaders she deems to be enemies of America, such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Raul Castro. Obama would. He promises a fundamentally different approach, one in which America is part of the community of nations, and does not stand outside and above the other countries of the world The impact an Obama presidency would make on the rest of the world would be titanic. Not only does Obama credibly promise a humbler, more co-operative foreign policy, but in his very being, he personifies a different kind of America, and his election would show America in its best light. Not only would America potentially be able to use its vast power for the greater good of the world, but it would be given the benefit of the doubt that no one wishes to give it now under George Bush. Those around the world fighting for human rights and human dignity not only would have a useful ally in the White House, but also an ally that would not discredit them in the eyes of those who need to be won over. Right now, the Iraq war and the innumerable imbecilities of the Bush doctrine, insofar as it relates to the shadow cast by America over the rest of the world, not only tarnishes America's image, but also has had the unfortunate consequence of empowering the most retrograde and retrogressive forces all over the world, especially in the Muslim world. Obama can change this. March 4 is just around the corner. The Democratic primaries in Ohio and Texas could be Hillary Clinton's last stand. But this time it will not just be Americans who will be watching to see who will challenge John McCain in November. The whole world is watching, and hoping to see a new chapter in American history unfold.
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