Obama Rescues the "American Soul"

Barack Obama’s election electrified the world but it’s not yet possible to know the reason. It’s kind of a transcendental pleasure of knowing that Bush is gone and of seeing him substituted with a man who is not from his party, that is new in politics, black, liberal, young, and the complete antithesis of the last shadow years, which were filled with a strong exclusionary, messianic conservatism. Terrorism, that mantra for this disastrous administration, which annulled all other considerations, no longer has the original sense of urgency, which dilutes a wide agenda of issues, lead specially by global warming and stock market irresponsibility.

Therefore, for this point, Obama is not history yet. He’s just the end, let’s say, dialectic of an idea of power that doesn’t consider reason, opting instead for what Bush called “moral clarity,” a term ambiguous and wide enough to justify all sorts of lies.

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

Obama will be history if, in his administration, he takes Americans back to their dreams. In the meanwhile he’ll be only good news – but even this is no little feat in this sad America, the legacy of Bush.