Presidential enthusiasm

On first entering the Oval Office FDR famously let out a scream which brought aides rushing in to assist him. Obama must surely also have a sense of the magnitude of the task bequeathed to him by the baby boomers, but I still imagine he had one of those poorly-contained smiles on his face when he made his way into that room for the first time as its new executive occupant.

Will he cover the walls with pictures of himself? Helen Searls has written an interesting piece in Spiked! about the preemptive iconisation of America's 44th President:

"Che Guevara, whose simple image was again just a face decoupled from a political message, used to decorate the bedrooms of the youth of America and Europe. Few who owned the poster knew very much about Che Guevara the politician, but having it on your wall signalled that you were somehow progressive and radical. Today, though, progress and radicalism have been replaced by hope and faith. And it is not simply teenagers who want to identify with this message."

Obama made several speeches on Tuesday, not just that epic set-piece at the Capitol. Perhaps the one that will stick in our minds is that which he made at the Western inauguration ball, the ninth that he and Michelle had attended. It was delivered in the 'tired and emotional' fashion made fashionable by France's teetotaling President: "Lesh Save America. I love you....Michelle loves you..."

Still, even these public moments weren't exactly ad-libbed. He repeated the same remarks about his wife's heels at every bash they graced throughout the evening of his first half day in office.

Commentators on Fox and CNN tried to locate Obama's acceptance speech appropriately within the canon. Not as good as Kennedy, some suggested, but then every judgment we make about that President is tempered by what we know of his fate. The ultimate test of Yes We Can will have to be Yes We Did. For until the results are in there is a danger that fine intentions degrade into a form of political escapism.

However, there's no question that self-evident but half-remembered truths can benefit greatly from the kind of kick up the backside they get once repeated to a mass audience by a genuinely inspirational leader.

My own enthusiasm for Obama's words was tempered by the big turn-off delivered by the effect they were clearly having on some audience members who, heads back and hands clasped in front of their faces, were murmuring strange, unenlightened political incantations. And yet, in spite of the fact that there was plenty of hope and faith in Obama's message, non-believers got a brief mention too, and the new President promised to "restore science to its rightful place."

"Hope, n. Desire and expectation rolled into one." Ambrose Bierce

Obama's approval ratings...

Across Latin America. He has some work to do down here in Guatemala. 

'Knowledgability'

If even Faux News suspects that this, even more than the Lehman Bros collapse, was what did for McCain, it's got to be worth re-watching:



And...



But watch out Governor Palin, this red-stater could be on the ticket in 2012:

Throwing the ball down field

Quote of the Day

"While publicly supporting Palin, McCain's top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family—clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards. The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent "tens of thousands" more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast," and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books."
Newsweek on the tag hag from Alaska

The Greatest Nation on Earth

As a formal speech-maker Obama is a heady mix of post-modern and pre-modern, his discourse full of textual and gestural quotes from earlier American discourse, whilst harking back to the days where no political statement could be made without first embedding it within one or other prevailing mythology.

Maybe Simon Schama was right that he represents a self-conscious reinvention of 'American fervour' It's this aspect of his appeal that fosters reservations in my father's mind. He's in no doubt that the right man won on Tuesday, it's just that what others find inspiring he finds comparatively flimsy.

McCain's speech outside a Phoenix hotel on Tuesday night reminded me how much respect I used to have for him before he picked Sarah Palin as his pitbull companion. And the boos that accompanied every mention of the name of his future President reminded me why he has been ill-served by the GOP's unprincipled use of him as a way of distancing themselves from the discredited good ol'boy in the White House.

I'd have to agree that McCain's valedictory address was the more powerful of the two speeches. I felt a shiver of unease when Obama began to borrow from the Gettysburg address before re-mixing his "Yes we can" refrain. The positive visual image of a little puppy dozing on a chair in the oval office was a welcome one though.

It has to be said that my father stopped understanding modern communications back in the 60s. When an ad doesn't state the benefits clearly and concisely, he shrugs his shoulders with visible irritation.

Maybe my generation of westerners really needs an America with a strong and credible brand, whose champions speak in the kind of fervent idiom that our own politicians un-learned a long time ago. Perhaps we too need the USA to be the 'greatest nation on Earth,' but in innocent, not cynical guise.

Unfortunately we have recent memories of fervour-lite in the form of Tony Blair. So much was anticipated, so little delivered. It may help Obama however that he's going to have to play defense from the get-go. Just avoiding economic catastrophe will be a significant achievement.

A last thought on the clearly very controversial question of whether Palin cost McCain the centre. Perhaps she is taking some of the blame that he himself might shoulder. For her role was clearly to 'shore up the base', Republican voters of the God-fearing sort who might not initially have warmed to the old maverick. He was more or less level with Obama in the polls back then, so all he had to do was reach out to the centre himself. But then came the Lehman Bros collapse and McCain's response was to shift his own discourse to the right and maybe it was that, and not that loose cannonette from Alaska, which ultimately doomed his campaign. The economy - and the real prospect of a complete meltdown in early October - undoubtedly created strong head winds for McCain-Palin, but the particular manner of his navigation through them undermined any sense that the Senator from Arizona's age was an advantage.

CNN exit polls showed that ageism played a much bigger role in this election than racism, but nobody really wants to talk about that now...

Watching from the cheap seats

The skies over La Antigua were lit up by rockets at 10pm local time, already Guy Fawkes morning back home in London, but over here it was the moment when the networks projected victory for Obama.

I'd been walking Jin and had aimed to get back by the 'top of the hour' but he'd decided to change our route spontaneously, and so I missed the announcement by some seven minutes in the end. It seems that the panel on CNN were only just recovering from a collective, choked silence. The first to speak referred emotionally to those who had kept faith with the Constitution even when it excluded them.

"Este fue una goleada," they observed over on TVe.

On the night it was the BBC who had the most impressive touch-screen technology - though Jeremy Vine could have done with some more practice with it - and the most lively studio guests, among them Simon Schama and Christopher Hitchens.

Around 10pm DC time Schama accused David Dimbleby of being a "wuss' for not calling it for Obama when the projections were already giving him 200 college votes (and Ohio). Dimbleby retorted that he couldn't be much of a historian if he goes about writing history before it happens!

And then, next to Schama, there was the undiplomatic presence of Dubya's former UN Ambassador John R. Bolton, who suggested the BBC should fire its reporter in Colorado and called another one "ignorant" to her face when she dared to suggest that the choice of Governor Palin had lost McCain the centre. (Simple maths shows she was probably right though- that the centre and the left together make up more than 50% of the country).

Bolton then pointedly noted that the BBC - and by implication all of us good for nothing limey election obsessives- "are guests here". Schama then bated him a bit more by stating that it appears that the Republican Party has been left with the old South and not much else.

Obama-Biden voters celebrating in New York and Florida spoke of the feeling of "closure" after the nightmare eight years ago. I loved the stock broker in Sarasota who said "I'd rather have a better country and a better world and pay some more taxes for that."

Back over on CNN Alex Castellanos admitted that the GOP had trashed its brand. That they certainly did, and their nation's brand as well. The new President-elect has an unprecedented opportunity to mend it.

Elizabeth Dole....epic fail.

Kenya has declared a national holiday.

Please to remember the 5th of November...

Quote of the Day

"The fact that Barack Obama would also be the first black president has obscured the significance of his political colouring. If he wins, he will be the first northern, urban liberal to win the presidency since the culture wars broke out in the US in the 1960s...the one point in the 2008 campaign when the momentum switched to the Republicans was when Mr McCain nominated Ms Palin and chucked some red meat to red America. The cultural card was working for the Republicans until Lehman Brothers collapsed."
Gideon Rachman, FT

[She was a big juicy hunk of red meat to the Blue America and the centrists too though, wasn't she? If you agree with the FT that America is a country of about 40 per cent conservatives, 40 per cent moderates and 20 per cent liberals, and you consider where McCain was in the polls prior to picking Palin....FAIL."]

Possible essay question for the next generation of historians:

Could Bush have avoided the Crash of 2008 and saved the Republican Party by bailing out Lehman Bros?

E Pluribus Unum

From many, one is America's motto, as well as a compact summary of how it has gone about shrinking a multitude of different cultural perspectives and outlooks into one - its own; the self-styled force for global development and freedom - while it effectively closes itself off to any contending mythologies from outside.

A remark by Simon Schama in The American Future caught my attention: he noted that the first settlers had made the Atlantic crossing in order to escape the stifling parochialism of the old world. He did not however go on to make the seemingly obvious further observation that the society that they helped to create has itself become one of the most stiflingly parochial in the modern world.

Of the changes that an Obama Presidency might bring, an end to American self-absorption would be one of the most welcome. On the face of it the Democrats, with their protectionist inclinations, don't much look like party to deliver it, but this is in part because they have tended to occupy a middle position between the two poles presumptously straddled by the Republicans since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

There's no better example of this unholy alliance between smart liberal economics and moronic social conservatism - America at its most enterprising, fluid and global and America at its most doggedly self-contained and rednecky - than the Faux News channel.

Obama may represent a chance to reverse the trend towards staggering inequality within the US, but what of the rest of the world? Will Americans continue to consume most of the world's resources as if they belonged to them alone?

"Only in America could a man declare that history is bunk", declared William Fowler. Yet while 'Joe the Gringo' is often justly censured for his sub-prime grasp of history, it is perhaps his persistent wrongheadedness about the future that sets him apart from the rest of us. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century Americans have sold themselves an over-optimistic view of the human future and their likely role in it. One might even say that those who have bought into this, have acted as if it were their solemn duty to free themselves from the mental constraints of time and geography that apply to every other nation on earth.

Moments of economic crisis such as this throw this aspect of the gringo outlook into even sharper relief; after all, financial bubbles - such as those provoked by railways and the Internet - are most often the consequence of a misapprehension of chronological scale: in a word, overanticipation.

In 1929 it was said that markets had been "discounting not only the future, but the hearafter", and they've been chewing up everyone's future again over the past couple of decades.

Right now citizens of the USA are reportedly more downbeat about what once looked like an ever-improving American future than they been have for many decades. And yet, as this election enters its final hours and an Obama victory seems assured, it's thought-provoking that many are finding shreds of optimism in the sensation that their lives are passing through a definingly positive moment of 'history'. Let's hope they're right....

Quote of the Day

"No le estamos pidiendo que sea un revolucionario, que sea socialista..sólo queremos que el negro que está a punto de ser presidente de los EE UU tenga suficiente estatura para los tiempos que al mundo le ha tocado vivir."
Hugo Chávez



Every Prez needs a nodder in a red baseball cap 'colocado' next to him.

Worst case scenario...

Obama is Beautiful World

(As well as being the next President of the United States of America, Obama is a small fishing village in Japan.)

Quote of the Day

"Equality, which is the primary value of the left, is a European value, not an American value. Let me tell you that right now. I know this sounds offensive to half of my fellow Americans, because they have been Europeanized in their values. The French Revolution is not the American Revolution. The French Revolution said Liberty, Fraternity, Equality. The American Revolution said Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. We have lost touch with what our distinctive American values are. We have distinctive American values...We have a better value system, and this is being protected by one of the two parties: the Republican party."
Dennis Prager, Talk show host

See also:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..."(US Constitution) and "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."(Gettysburg Address)

Wassup 2008, full version

And the added irony is that Cindy McCain is chair of Hensley & Co, one of Anheuser-Busch's biggest wholesalers.

(Thanks to Joel for this clip)

One week to go...

McCain-Palin is turning into a nightmare ticket for the GOP. One makes neo-liberal economic policy sound passé, the other makes it sound stupid. As for foreign policy, why is there any surprise that Al Q has endorsed them?

I had a quite terrible nightmare the other night. In it I'd been watching the upcoming election night coverage up to the point where the first swing state had been called for Obama, but had experienced a 2nd degree nodding off, only to wake up suddenly within this dream and find that McCain had been declared the surprise victor. As Obama made a sad farewell speech to an almost empty auditorium, my waking mind echoed to a single flailing enunciation: "noooooooooooooooooo....."

It echoed a painful lived experience. I remember drifting off late in the night back in November 2000 shortly after CNN had just declared the Sunshine State for Gore. The TV was still on as I dozed, and Gore's sudden reversal in fortune became a kind of phantasmagoric experience. I opened my eyes to news of Bush's apparent victory feeling that the world had somehow fallen asleep at the wheel and skidded off the road!

Quote of the Day

"In an election that has been fought on an astoundingly low cultural and intellectual level, with both candidates pretending that tax cuts can go like peaches and cream with the staggering new levels of federal deficit, and paltry charges being traded in petty ways, and with Joe the Plumber becoming the emblematic stupidity of the campaign, it didn't seem possible that things could go any lower or get any dumber. But they did last Friday, when, at a speech in Pittsburgh, Gov. Sarah Palin denounced wasteful expenditure on fruit-fly research, adding for good xenophobic and anti-elitist measure that some of this research took place "in Paris, France" and winding up with a folksy 'I kid you not.' "
Christopher Hitchens, in Slate

Quote of the Day

"If we succumb to a dream world, then we'll wake up to a nightmare."

Jimmy Carter's 1980 Convention acceptance speech

Quote of the Day

"If Clinton sees you walking down the other side of the street, he immediately crosses over to shake your hand; if Obama sees you coming, he nods and waits for you to cross."

A mate of Obama!

A bunch of second stringers...

...sound off to Al Jazeera about Obama and that whole muzzl'm thing. "A little unnerving..." (Thanks again to Scott for this one!)

Wobbly John

Ok, McCain may have lost all three debates, but we'll give him the comedy stand-off. He still looks like he's going to throw a wobbly any minute though - I'm sure those 'unstable' facial impressions of his have been worrying a few floating voters.