BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA

Obama’s overblown media image has blurred the perceptions of the proverbial
common man. In spite of the fact that most facts of his life are known to the
public, it is difficult to understand him as a political leader and to say definitely, at
this starting point of his Presidency, what kind of President he would make. He
has been compared to Lincoln, Roosevelt and J.F. Kennedy, but these
comparisons appear invidious because all of them were white Americans; nor can
his realization of the American Dream be called a rag to riches story. To a
perceptive observer, he would look like a mulatto character from Faulkner’s
novels who suddenly has woken up into the twenty–first century multicultural
America and remembers no nightmares of the reality of his 18th or 19th century
past of racial discrimination and historic humiliation.

He is the first African-American to hold the office of the President of the United
States. He, more than anything else, re-presents the mixed, educated, immigrant
middle-class of the present-day USA.

Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he

was the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. He worked
as a community organizer, and practiced as a civil rights attorney in Chicago
before serving three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. He also
taught Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to
2004. He was defeated in the US Congress elections 2000, but got elected to the
Senate in November 2004. In July 2004.

As a Democratic minority member in the 109th Congress he helped make

legislation to control conventional weapons and for greater public accountability
in federal funds spending. He also made official trips to Eastern Europe, the
Middle East and Africa. During the 110th Congress he contributed to legislation
on lobbying and electoral fraud, climate change, nuclear terrorism, care for US
military personnel returning from combat assignments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Thus, he is not entirely the creation of the media. Had he been purely white,
instead of half-white half-black as he is, his rise would not have attracted such
exaggerated media attention. How long the honey- moon with the media will last
is hard to say. He faces the enormous task of putting the derailed economy on
course and sustaining the vast but doubtful military involvements of USA abroad,
especially in Asia. As President, he will also have to rework political, economic and
diplomatic equations with almost every important country of the world.

The spell of relief from the outgoing toxic Bush administration will be over soon
The obvious historical significance of an African-American taking over as President
of the United States, “a polity substantially founded on the genocide of one race
and the slave labour of another”, will also soon start glowering at all Americans—
implications will be global.
Obama’s sudden rise, no doubt, is the outcome of racial politics. He has certainly
benefited from the legacy of the civil rights and black liberation movements of the
1960s, led by Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcom X, both of whom got
assassinated. So many others died in these movements. These events have left a
great impact on American society and transformed large segments of its people.
That social transformation is believed to have been responsible for making 66 per
cent of those between the age of 18 and 29, and 52 per cent of those in the 30-44
age group vote for Mr Obama. Surprisingly, he is neither a product of that legacy
nor one to associate with its militant ideological stance. Yet, he is its absolute
beneficiary.

Obama’s middle Muslim name created some early troubles but repeated
assertions of his deep Christian faith finally overcame the public doubts. He
strictly prohibited his campaign staff from wearing any visibly Islamic gear, both in
public or on television. He made it a point to visit churches and synagogues but
never a mosque, ignoring the unsolicited counsel of important newspapers like
The New York Times and International Herald Tribune.

His foreign policy postures also reflected a similar stance. Obama criticized the UN
for permitting the Iranian President Ahmadinejad to address the UN General
Assembly even when US national agencies confirmed that Iran has no nuclear
weapons program. He has reiterated quite a few times his intention to use all
American power, including military force, to stop Iran’s nuclear program. Almost
in Bush-like tones, he has expressed his unwavering commitment to escalate the
war in Afghanistan and widening the scope of US bombing in northwestern
Pakistan, with or without the consent of the Pakistanis. To that extent, he has
indicated continuity of Bush administration’s military unilateralism.

His pursuit of support from Israel and the Israeli lobby in the US has been
persistent. Uri Avnery, the veteran Israeli writer and peace activist, described Mr
Obama’s appearance at the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as
one that “broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning”. He stopped former
President Jimmy Carter from speaking at the Democratic Party Convention for
fear of a backlash from the Israeli lobby; this was described as “a cynical kind of
pragmatism”.

Mr Obama’s stirring populist rhetoric during the campaign and use of words like
“Change” and “Hope” and undulating chant, “Yes, We can”, boosted a
demoralized nation and supercharged its younger people.

He made broad promises to rebuild a crestfallen nation—its infrastructure, its

education and health systems and to revamp its tax structure to favour families
earning less than $250,000 a year. He forged a cross-racial coalition of the young,
the poor and the unemployed, as also the middle classes imparting to his
campaign—a progressive veneer in a nation soaked in neo-liberalism. So the Right
Wing labelled him as a “socialist” but to no effect. For Obama, winning the
elections proved easier than subduing Hillary Clinton. The financial meltdown too
came just at the right moment to turn the tables on John McCain.
Obama’s campaign raised far more money than any other US pre-sidential
candidate in history, not all from small donors, contrary to his campaigners’ claim.
Fewer than 2,600 contributors to Mr McCain campaign fund were “chief
executives”, nearly 6,000 of Mr Obama’s contributors were listed as chief
executive officers. Washington lobbyists and lawyers, the communication
industry and the electronics industry, healthcare-related private interests, nuclear
and pharmaceutical industries and all kinds of big business made huge
contributions. Lobbyists alone gave $37 million. Will they and other big donors
not be rewarded?

His previous record in politics shows that he made a speech opposing the
impending Iraq war in 2002, before he came even into the Illinois Senate but he
voted in favour of every war appropriation bill during the Bush administration. He
edited the Harvard Law Review, taught law at Chicago University, and was a civil
rights lawyer before coming into politics, but as a Senator he, without
compunction, voted for the Patriot Act 2, notorious for extreme curtailment of
civil liberties in recent US history. He, along with Mr McCain, voted in favour of
the bailout plan that gifts hundreds of billions of dollars to the very financial
institutions who caused the infamous meltdown. As President-elect he urged the
Bush administration to bail out General Motors as well.

Mr Obama has been advocating a military policy that is incompatible with the
investments he has proposed to re-build America’s failing physical and social
infrastructure. Thus, somewhere there is a quirk in his leadership—projected as
pacifist and progressive.
Finally, we have to consider the Indo-US relationship under Mr Obama? The
basics of the new Indo-US equation were formulated under Mr Clinton and not
under Mr Bush. A far-reaching military alliance for the Indian Ocean and beyond;
the US-Israel-India axis for West Asia; the nuclear trade are likely to be pursued by
Obama, though without flair. There could be some pressure to sign the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) but that will not endanger nuclear trade.

Obama represents a declining West and America. For an assurance of his

doubtfully great presidency, he can only look backward to the USA’s past glory.
America is a futurist nation, but if Obama looks forward, he will only see an Asia
Rising—not a very comfortable thought even for an African-American President of
the USA!