Obama, the End of the Beginning

There are those who rub their hands at the heat of the fire that today burns idols worshipped only yesterday. There are those who are sincerely worried, seeing the hope of a fairer world fade. After two hundreds days in power, Barack Obama encounters the first rough patch of his term: too far from his election to find some new momentum, too far from the first results of his policy to boast about a result, he is crossing the no man’s land of politics. People are told to wait, but some are wondering if they were mistaken; leaders are told to persevere, yet they may be mistaken as well.

The end of this grace period has its benefits. In the United States as in France, it ends the simple power of the verb, the tribunal and televised sentence of a term; it calls for action and is impatient for concrete results. By its corrosive wind of bitterness, it also distinguishes real courage from simple grandstanding, statesmen from showmen. No offense to pessimists: Barack Obama is steadfast, and his success is already underway. The current news for him is not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning.

If the United States’ stimulus plan stumbles like the Europeans’ efforts due to the greed of financial institutions; if the insurance lobby attempts to block reform on healthcare; and whether judicial kafkaisms complicate the legal closing of Guantanamo; the main thing is at work: a new era, an unprecedented course, the first syllables of the twenty-first century as men will define it for history.

Thus, in this crucial chapter for other democracies, Barack Obama has outlined a world order that can only make humanists happy. His Cairo speech addressed to the Arab world, his clear firmness towards Israel, his incredible generosity towards Africa, a true post-compassionate pact: the paths are open towards modernity; may humanity be engaged! With this president, America has not only become friendly again, it is once again on the right path. This differentiates Obama from Bush and his martial fancies; this also distinguishes him geopolitically from Kennedy. Realpolitik certainly bathes the dialogue with China, or the face-to-face with Russia, but it is because the American president embodies the United States that the world needs.

In France, there is a deep anti-American movement, fervently wishing for the “end of the Empire”: it overlooks, or maybe knows all too well that it is barbarism, not the Enlightenment, which would follow such a fall. And then there is a more recent tendency, for those who love to be disappointed by the United States, to engage in nostalgic nihilism with despaired sighs that “we have loved each other dearly.” These French wish Obama would fail, and slide between two teary sobs as they talk. This chorus of mourners is roaring in the doldrums of August. The era warrants more gracious sirens.