Obama and the Rescue of the American Soul

Barack Obama’s election electrified the world, but it’s not yet possible to know the reason why. It’s kind of a transcendental pleasure knowing that Bush is gone and seeing him about to be replaced by a guy who’s not from his party, who’s new to politics, black, liberal and young, a complete antithesis of the recent shadow years full of a strong messianic and excluder conservatism. Terrorism, a mantra for this disastrous administration that annulled all other considerations, has no more of its original sense and dilutes a wide agenda of issues, especially global warming and stock market irresponsibility.

Therefore, on this point, Obama is not historic yet. Let’s say he’s just the dialectic end of an idea of power that didn’t considered reason, substituting it for what Bush called “moral clarity,” a term where studied ambiguities are wide enough to justify all sort of lies.

That’s why the expectations on Obama’s shoulders go much further than the facts. The hope is he rescues the “American soul” for millions of people who since the eighteenth century have helped to transform the U.S. from a quagmire to an admirable country which used to be a model for the world. It happens in a context of profound crisis, not only economically, but it’s about its own identity.

Obama will make history if his administration takes Americans back to their dreams. In the meanwhile he’ll be only good news – which is not little in this sad America, the legacy of Bush.