Obamania and Us

One last sprint for history. Obama has two weeks left to make his dream come true. The arrival of a black president at the helm of American power is no longer unimaginable. From now on, the Democratic candidate is holding all the cards.

The young senator has set off to conquer Florida, a key state where in 2000 Democrat Al Gore lost by a hair’s-breadth to George W. Bush. While he was there, Obama had a joint meeting with Hillary Clinton. The man is equipped with an impressive stash of campaign money: he received the record sum $150 million in September alone, contributing to a total of $650 million in total– more than was spent in 2004 by Bush and Kerry combined. And that’s not all. A heavyweight Republican, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, has given Obama his support. And the financial crisis has worked in favor of Democratic arguments about the regulation of the economy.

So is the fight already over? Not yet. John McCain, the Republican candidate, is going to battle on with all the energy of desperation, playing on people’s fears and dubbing Democratic policies “socialist”–an insult in the US. And no-one knows the part that race might play once voters have entered the secrecy of the polling booth. That’s a key question.

Obama or McCain? The decision affects us too. The whole world–especially Belgians and Europeans–has chosen the charismatic Obama. We want to see him reinvigorate the spirit of dialogue and multilateralism, to give the fight against global warming a chance. We want change!

As our extended coverage of the elections has shown, the revolution will not necessarily be as far-reaching as some have hoped. Many of our recent news stories suggest that key issues for the future president will be to maintain prudence in relations with the Muslim world, to oppose the resurgence of Russia, to secure America’s energy independence, perhaps even to treat the European Union with mistrust.

But all the same, if Obama is following a dream, it’s a dream of a change in tone, a return to clear thinking, and a rejection of the use of anxiety as a tool of government, a policy which the Bush administration has pursued and which the McCain-Palin ticket would continue. In addition to the extraordinary rebirth which the election of a “minority” candidate would represent, those promised transformations in themselves justify our country’s rampant Obamania, and give it its meaning.