Portrait of Barack Obama

When Barack Obama’s candidacy became official on June 4, 2008, the news was immediately hailed as “historic.” Two hundred years after the slave trade was outlawed, 146 years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation and 45 years after Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King’s “dream,” the United States proved that it is a country “where [people] will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

In late August, the senator from Illinois, 46 years old, born to an African father and an American mother, became the Democratic candidate for president at the convention in Denver, Colorado. The powerful symbolism of the moment and the frenzied enthusiasm of tens of thousands of gathered Obama supporters swept away all other considerations. “America, this is our moment,” he said, promising to “change Washington.”

In January 2007, when he had announced his interest in becoming president, no one had given this “skinny kid with a funny name,” with little experience after only three years in the Senate, much of a chance. But his call for “change” and his talents as a charismatic speaker sparked a grassroots movement among young people and Democratic activists, as well as a massive mobilization of black Americans. He understood how to take advantage of the deep rejection of Bush policies and to organize this movement within what he called on Tuesday evening, the “most effective political organization in the country,”–fed by a fantastic Internet fundraising machine.

Keeping the troubadours of “black identity” at arm’s length

The candidate’s self-control is as impressive as his charisma. He continues to pile away ever more money in his coffers, and his campaign has been perfect so far, propelling him toward the White House like a well-tuned, superpowered Formula 1 engine. Barack Obama is to politics what Tiger Woods has been to sports. The golf star (few black Americans practice his sport) proudly proclaims himself as “Cablinasian,” asserting his Caucasian (white), black, Indian and Asian roots.

Most of all, the young senator from Chicago is taking special care to keep his distance from the troubadours of “black identity.” This has earned him the distrust of part of the African-American community (half of blacks surveyed said he “does not share [their] values”). He has had run-ins with certain historic leaders, much more “liberal” than he, in the black community. Reverend Jesse Jackson (who was himself a candidate for the Democratic nomination but never approached Obama’s level of success) is said to have reproached Obama for “acting white.” Andrew Young (ex-U.N. ambassador) joked that ex-president Bill Clinton, an Arkansas native, had “probably gone with more black women” than Obama, who grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia and at Harvard University and who did not live through the intense racial confrontations of the civil rights movement.

It is in part because he contrasts with the dominant stereotypes of the black American and does not play the “race card” that Barack Obama passes without difficulty among the white electorate. His appearance—a sophisticated mix—is in keeping with his (fairly vague and very centrist) discourse of rejection of all that divides Americans. He promises to unite “red” (Republicans) and “blue” (Democrats), liberals and conservatives, as well as blacks and whites, all under the banner of “hope”. This approach is the product of his own background but also of a carefully developed strategy. Paradoxically, it is by proving that he can be the choice of white voters that he has the best chance to rally support from black voters, that essential component of the Democratic electorate. The verdict will come on November 4th.