Obama and the World

Obama enchanted the Europeans. His trip to Berlin was spectacular. If the Europeans voted in the American elections, Obama would win by an immense majority. But after his departure, the debate began. What did he really say? Hollow phrases splendidly structured and very well spoken in his powerful baritone voice. The experts ran towards the two books published by him. Not a single signal. Europe did not appear interested in him when he wrote them. Neither did Latin America. There is no trace that he might have seriously reflected about the key concept of history in the last one hundred years: the existence of an entity called “The Western World.”

For the Europeans, this is grave. The United States today is the heart, and in great measure, the brain of an enormous segment of the planet that for centuries, in the Middle Ages, began to call itself “Christian” and that later evolved by other rough roads. The United States, with hardly 5% of the world population, produces 27% of all the wealth that the planet generates. The dollar, today weak and probably undervalued, continues being the divisive international key. The major parts of technological and scientific developments emerge from companies and American investigative centers. But still, most important are the American arms that continue to protect the European perimeter inside and outside NATO. At the beginning of the nineties, when Yugoslavia fell, it was Washington who took control of the situation. Still today, it is the United States who makes sure that Kosovo isn’t finished off by the Serbs in bloody mouthfuls.

When Hillary Clinton was struggling for the Democratic Party nomination, she would usually ask herself what merits Senator Obama had to be candidate for president, and immediately she would answer herself mockingly: a speech. His work as a legislator wasn’t backed, he hasn’t had administrative responsibilities, he hasn’t been a successful and creative businessman. The most important thing that he had done was electrify the Democratic Convention of 2004 when John Kerry’s official candidacy was announced. Until that moment, almost no one knew or admired the young lawyer from Chicago.

In reality, it wasn’t the first time that just making a speech turned an American politician into a national figure. The Republican Warren Harding, another good communicator, was launched into fame when they elected him for speaking at the convention that selected William Taft in 1912 as presidential candidate. Even Ronald Reagan saw himself catapulted to the forefront of politics when he captivated the Republican audience in 1964 during the consecration of Barry Goldwater as aspirant to the White House. Until then, Reagan was only a determined ideologue on a crusade against the excesses of the government, more than a conventional politician. Three years later, thanks to that speech, he became the governor of California.

But-and this is what preoccupies Europeans-since the United States is a World power, a phenomenon that began to develop itself in 1898 after the war with Spain, all the American presidents have understood the responsibilities that such a country so profoundly implicated in the destinies of the rest of the world has. And it is on this point which they begin to look to Obama with great fear.

Why? Because when they study his biography, they see an intelligent social contender who chose a political career as the civic leader of the Black community to which he belonged. He didn’t place all the United States inside his thoughts with its enormous complexity and load of responsibilities, but rather only the concrete problems (and there are many) of the Black, poor neighborhoods the difficulties that they suffer, the abuses and lack of opportunities that are the aim. He was a contender for effective and brilliant civil rights, but in no way making himself similar to a leader of The Western World as Kennedy or Reagan was able to do.

If Obama becomes president of the United States he will be the first in many senses: the first Black, the first son of an African immigrant, the first native Hawaiian, the first born in the 60’s, the first that grew up in a remote and different country (Indonesia). All this is very good, but what worries the Europeans and many Latin Americans is another aspect: he is the first since Teddy Roosevelt to date that lacks a global vision of reality. This can be a dangerous limitation.