Barack Obama
Originally posted Nov 5th 2008:
There’s only one thing worth talking about today. Well, that’s not quite true, as the world ticks on with all its horrors in tow – the Congo, Iraq (still), Russia deploying missiles near Poland, ever-increasing financial gloom – but all of it seems to be somehow diminished today. The reason is one man, Barack Obama, president elect, and the thing that is making me look at the rest of the world through the wrong end of a telescope is hope.
Hope is s fickle thing, especially as it rarely fulfilled, and my inherent cynicism wants it gone. It is all the more potent, though, due to the hard contrast placed upon last night’s events by the last eight years under Bush. I’m uncomfortable with hope, it’s too pleasant to be true. It’s a little like being drunk – everything is very immediate, and you can’t see things how they really are. Things still fall apart around you but you’re too intoxicated to notice. So it’s time to sober-up.
Imagine a room, anywhere in the U.S., suspended polystyrene tile ceiling, one door, no windows, two chairs. The slender, immaculately suited president elect sits alone, happy to have won, sad for his grandmother, patiently waiting for something, unsure about what it is. Something’s gnawing away at his gut, just made tolerable by the numbing euphoria coursing through him.
Another man enters, conservative suit, strong physique, one of those things in his ears that seem to be monopolised by television presenters and the secret service. He sits in the chair opposite. ‘Mr President Elect. We need to have a few words.’
He removes his earpiece, as Barack Obama leans back, feigning relaxation and gestures for him to continue with an open-handed gesture.
‘Firstly let me tell you that thee are no aliens on cold storage in Area 51. Roswell was just an experimental aircraft we didn’t want anyone to know about, and aliens do not visit hick towns in Alabama to stick probes into the backsides of American citizens.’
Obama smiles, ‘I didn’t think that…’
The other man is not smiling as he interrupts. ‘It is not my place to assume what you are thinking, Mr Obama, sir, but to simply tell you how things are.’
Obama’s face falls. He’s wondering if it was the first thing Bush wanted to know about. He snaps suddenly to his senses. ‘What exactly is this about, Mr…’
‘Wiseman, sir, Mr Wiseman.’ Obama’s eyebrows raise, showing doubt. Wiseman continues. ‘And I’m here to brief you on what is possible and what is not. Do not take this as a joke, sir’, he says, noting Obama’s building amusement. ‘You must listen.’
Obama nods. ‘Pray continue.’
For the next four hours, Wiseman explains to him how he can’t upset big business, nor raise taxes significantly, how he might have to take proposition 8 with good grace, how wars for resources must continue. He will explain that there simply isn’t the money to help poorer nations. He will explain the need for continued military development, of the difficulties, both financial and political, of switching to alternative energy. At some point he will mention assassination.
‘Liberals rarely shoot anyone sir. Not true of cultural conservatives. Your ‘Guns and God’ comments won’t help here.’
‘Are you telling me that I am going to be shot because I’m black?’
The man shrugs. ‘Maybe – it is certainly a factor – but you don’t have to be black to be shot, sir. Kennedy couldn’t have been whiter if he’d been albino. The Muslim government of Iran are cultural conservatives, not just the farmers of Virginia. And not just you, sir.’
‘Seriously?’
Wiseman sighs. ‘I’m just saying, sir, that you might want to think a little about how much you want to push the abortion thing.’
He will explain the only way that he can effect change of any kind will be by tiny and seemingly insignificant degrees that might one day add up to something. Anything else will doubtless cause a massive increase in the economic downturn and a huge amount of resentment from the grass roots that need his help to the big businesses that really drive the country. Obama sighs. He can see his dreams dissolving before him, suddenly revealed for the ghostly chimeras they always were.
I don’t think that it actually happens like this. But he will have been told. Maybe months ago, maybe years, probably in hundreds of tiny little statements by hundreds of tiny men, rather than one big, imposing one.
If you want to hope, then, hope this. Hope that he means it. Hope that he has the courage and strength of character to risk quite literally everything for the principles he appears to have. Hope that the job itself doesn’t consume the man he appears to be. Hope that the American people can build up a head of steam and actually change their culture and society to make it less radically self-interested, less aggressive, more cooperative and more sympathetic on the world stage.
Hope, essentially, that we have judged him well. He is a charismatic man. It means he’s won, which is good. It also means he might have won had he not meant a single word of it. Last night, caught up in it all, I had a little weep. The last time that happened in a similar context, the Labour party had just smashed the Tories to smithereens at the polls, ending the rule of a right-wing government that had been in power for almost all of my life and had all but destroyed the less wealthy to feed ever more money to those who were already bloated beyond measure with cash, had fostered a selfish, money-grabbing culture, suffered urban decay and then decreased civil liberties, citing the very terrorism and antisocial behaviour that they had stirred-up as justification.
I had cried because I had hoped that this would change.