Barack Obama, An American Destiny

At the beginning of August 2007, Barack Obama was going through a rough time. Hillary Clinton had broken ahead in the polls. She had even been able to allow herself the luxury of participating in a national conference of left-wing bloggers in Chicago-–an audience that used to only ask to do battle with the “Clinton family.” Barack Obama was there as well, just dropping by. He was only accompanied by Robert Gibbs, his spokesperson, and Reggie Love, his basketball companion and body guard.

At the time, one could still approach the candidate, on the condition that there was no interview; interviews with the foreign press were put off until after the primaries. While waiting to be introduced before his speech, the candidate shared a few thoughts on France-–where he would go after the primaries-–and on its new president. He remembered having met Nicola Sarkozy in his Senate office in Washington. “That day,” he remarked, “there were two future presidents in the same room.” It was not the swaggering tone used by the candidates when they are trying to convince themselves of what they say. It was the tone of evidence, a statement of fact. Whether the foreign policy establishment likes it or not-–it reproached him that week for ill-considered statements on Pakistan that even Hillary called “naive”-–the presidency of the United States was within Barack Obama’s reach. And why wouldn’t it be? Barack Obama has an absolute confidence in his destiny, which he calls his “time.” In five months of bitter competition for the democratic nomination, he has repeated it from Iowa to Montana–“Our time has come.” And at even greater length, on Tuesday, 3 June in St. Paul, in his first speech as the party’s candidate. “This is our time. The time to turn the page, to bring a new energy and new ideas.” It is true that he arrives at just the right time. The ruling class is largely discredited. American society is increasingly multi-racial: half of the 7 million Americans that say they are of mixed race are under 18 (according to the 2000 census). And as Barack Obama sometimes reminds us, the United States in 2050 will no longer be a majority-White country.

Barack Obama arrives at the right time, and with a different profile: even if he speaks no foreign languages (except Indonesian), he is the first “global” candidate. On the campaign trail, he was sometimes joined by members of his family, which has been brought back together on a planetary scale. We saw Auma Obama, his half sister, who is engaged in social work in Nairobi, Kenya. She is the daughter of Barack Obama Senior, the candidate’s father, with his first wife. Or Maya Soetoro-Ng, his other half sister, born after his mother’s remarriage to an Indonesian businessman. Maya is a professor in Hawaii, where Barack was raised by his grandparents, and where 21% of the inhabitants call themselves “Hapa”-–half-and-half-–or children of mixed marriages.

And then there are the symbols. When the senator accepts the party nomination, at the convention in Denver on 28 August, it will be the anniversary to the day of the famous “I have a dream” speech delivered by Martin Luther King in 1963. When he takes his oath of office-–if he is elected-–in January 2009, it will be a few weeks from the birth of Lincoln bicentennial, the president that ended slavery–-who also came from Illinois and who has left immortal speeches in the American memory.

In contrast to Hillary Clinton, who has often brought up the “historic dimension” of the 2008 primaries–a woman and an African American aspiring to the party nomination-–Barack Obama rarely puts this dimension forward. By winning the party nomination, he does not go down in history any less. In their lifetime, the generation that had to conquer the right to share coffee shops or bus seats with Whites will have seen a Black chosen by millions of Whites to represent them in the competition for the White House.

When Barack was born, in 1961 in Honolulu, mixed marriages were forbidden in 16 states. Now he is at the gates of the White House. “Our country will never again be the same,” writes the blogger Oakland Kid on the website the Daily Kos. “We are now speaking to the entire world with a new voice. Somewhere in heaven, Martin Luther King, Thomas Jefferson and Walt Whitman must be smiling.” Unknown four years ago, presidential candidate at 46-years-old, Barack Obama displays a complete lack of feverishness. His biography has already been written, drafted at the age of 33, when he was leaving Harvard Law School where he was elected president of the prestigious Law Review. Behind his ascent and his obvious aptitude is hidden a disciplined organization based on an inner circle-–that of his friends from Chicago: progressive Jews and Blacks characteristic of the city. At his headquarters, the candidate only gave one instruction: no making a fuss.

Although he didn’t announce his candidacy until February 10th, 2007, Barack Obama has been preparing for a long time. Ever since his first “big” speech at the Democratic convention in 2004, his name has been heard among the rising stars of the party. In the summer of 2006 he went to South Africa and Kenya, with journalists, in anticipation of portraits that would surely accompany the release of his book Audacity of Hope. The publication of the work coincided with the mid-term elections in November, which allowed him to be a part of the debate without being a candidate and to discreetly begin to count his friends and financiers.

While today he displays a total rejection of lobbyists, he has not always been so inflexible. From the beginning in the Senate his “political machine” was made up of “a classic group of lobbyists and consultants from Washington,” as revealed by Harper’s magazine in November 2006. His main contributors were business consultancies. However his intentions were to do politics differently, Barack Obama knows how to make a cutting remark and to make concessions to the politics of the politician. After the controversy over his patriotism, he put a little American flag on his lapel.

Four years ago, certain Americans, among them the young, were irritated to see the enthusiasm of Europeans for Democrat John Kerry. They pointed out that “it’s not for foreigners to decide” on the president of the United States. Nothing of the sort this year. The idea that Barack Obama could reconcile them with the rest of the world and in one fell swoop turn the page on eight years of Bush presidency seems to be one of his assets. Barack Obama and he alone is worth years of efforts for public diplomacy. During the primaries, the State Department invited journalists from all over Africa to share in the campaign and show them America.

If Barack Obama is just as popular abroad, it is because he speaks “to the world” and that he talks about changing it. Sunday, two days from the close of the primaries, he was in South Dakota, manifestly thrilled to be finished after a 15-month race. Assured of victory, he had-–like Hillary Clinton-–visited Mount Rushmore, the site where the faces of the great American presidents are engraved into the rock: “My ears are too big to fit,” he joked. In the afternoon, he was at another of the unlikely sites of South Dakota, the Corn Palace-–a Palace of domes and minarets made out of corn kernels. In a good mood, wearing a t-shirt, he sported his side of “everything-will-be-alright.” He finished his speech with a story demonstrating the “viral” spirit of his campaign.

It was the winter in South Carolina. One morning when everything was going badly. He hadn’t seen his daughters in a week. The New York Times had published “a bad article.” It was raining, and when it was time to get in the car, to go to a town called Greenwood, his umbrella blew away. “At this point, I’m frustrated, tired, and drenched,” he said. When he got to the rally, there were only 20 people. But suddenly he heard a little woman “with a big hat, like she was coming out of church,” who started singing “Fired up, ready to go.” And the audience joined her.

“After a minute or two, I started feeling good,” recounted Barack Obama. “That shows you that if one voice can change a room, then it can change a city. And if it can change a city, it can change a nation. And if it can change a nation, it can change the world.” With that, he started to chant Fired up, and all the town chanted with him. Until the moment when, his demonstration made, the storyteller stopped. “Go on,” he said, “let’s go change the world.”