In Obama’s Hands, America Far from Its Caricatures

Utopia, Arab, Liberal, Pontiac, Winner, Aurora: these are all among American small towns still in the backwoods of the United States. The Le Temps United States correspondent, Luis Lema, went to meet inhabitants of this deep America that is so unknown and so often misjudged, and he will be making a series of six reports on them. He journeys to take the pulse of America as Barack Obama approaches the middle of his term.

Running a finger over a map of the immense American territory opens one to frustration. There are hundreds of cities and small towns with evocative names that seem to breathe the history of an entire country and the authenticity of its origins, and in which no one ever sets foot.

Le Temps has chosen a half dozen of these places, almost at random, but not completely: Utopia, Arab, Liberal, Pontiac, Winner, Aurora. They are among the small towns which, lost in the vastness of the U.S., still appear to be far from one another: Texas, Alabama, Nebraska, South Dakota …

What do these cities tell us about America’s real state of mind? Everything – almost. There, you can discover the clannish reactions characteristic of small towns, the fear of the new and the foreign, but also part of the dream that accompanied western expansion and the visceral suspicion of the centralization of power and, in particular, of Washington’s authority.

For the majority of city folks of either coast, this is a boring America on which they have decided to turn their backs once and for all. Rural, “meatpackers,” “racists,” etc. – the qualifiers they load on the inhabitants of these distant territories are, in reality, just as disparaging as they themselves are. In this country made of mixings and permanent uprootings, families often have ties to this rural America that molded them, but they are nevertheless a bit ashamed of it.

Barack Obama and the quasi-revolutionary promise that embodied his Democratic administration are already almost old news here, on these lands where people aren’t easily fooled and cling to their firearms as strongly as they cling to a mythical past. Instead, it’s as if the young, black president had remained nothing but a stranger, though he will soon reach the middle of his first term.

Obama’s first accomplishments – health insurance for all, aid to the unemployed, his quest of better relations with the rest of the world – are perceived here as menaces and dangers. His difficulties with restoring prosperity, his hesitations on immigration policy,or his moderate ideas on gay rights or on abortion conflict with those of the people here and are constantly caricatured by leaders of local opinion — politicians, sheriffs and clergymen — to better defend their opposition to change.

The America of these small towns suffers and works hard, but its distrust of the State does not make it a jungle or a land that adheres to a higher law. Its deeply religious nature has, at times, given rise to unexpected solidarities, which paradoxically make one think about the type of society Obama and his group are defending. And in spite of the ambient melancholy and the withdrawal which provoke unexpected outbursts, these towns can enjoy, to one degree or another, some important innovations, putting them on the path to the future – for example, in Michigan, which was devastated by the automobile crisis, or in Nebraska, which relies on its corn industry. What will become of America’s strength?