Barack Obama, Rebirth of the American Dream

America has chosen Barack Obama as its 44th president. More than a victory, it is a message. Astonishing for a politician little-known to the public scarcely a year ago. Unthinkable for a country marked by slavery and racial segregation. The country is putting an end to that shameful history. In January, when he is inaugurated, Obama will become the first mixed-race person to become president of the world’s most powerful country.

And so this American presidential campaign has ended happily. Two months into a historic financial crisis, a glimmer of hope seems to have emerged on the other side of the Atlantic. Already the whole world is turning toward this son of Hawaii, borne by hopes that are probably too great to be completely fulfilled. “Change we can believe in”: the message was too beautiful, its scope too great not to carry away American hearts tired out by eight years of the Bush administration.

Let us give Barack Obama an afternoon to rest. His entrance into the Oval Office will be a moment as unforgettable as the tears and smiles seen tonight on the faces of his supporters. The 44th president will be able to savor these moments, these images. He must above all preserve them as an anchor, a life preserver, a buoy of remembrance that he will have to use as, beginning tomorrow, reality resumes its course and problems continue relentlessly to appear. Numerous dossiers already await Obama. The financial crisis, of course, will take up most of his time, along with the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts and climate change and so forth. One thinks also of the permanent issues—immigration, insecurity, health-system reform.

The American Message

There is also the unknown, the unpredictable, those events that may mark the new presidency and change its intentions. When first elected in 2000, George W. Bush promised a new America, less involved internationally, less present, less interventionist. The 43rd president of the United States wanted the country no longer to be the policeman of the world as it entered the 21st century. But the smoke that enveloped the streets of Manhattan and the towers of the collapsing World Trade Center, brought by terrorists, irreversibly changed the game. Promises were abandoned under the rubble of Sept. 11, 2001, scarcely nine months after Bush No. 2 entered office. On that day we were all Americans. Maybe we are again, after this Democratic victory.

What remains is this election itself. The event is of course eminently important for the United States. It is important, too, for the rest of the world, which hopes, with this election and the arrival of Obama, to find again that America that it loves. The election also should cause Europe and especially France to question themselves. Are we capable of electing a mixed-race person to the Elysée Palace? The question has not yet presented itself. Today is the time for appreciating this victory, awaited by nearly the whole world, at least until reality again sets in.