Confessions of an Obamaniac: The Good America

Those who observe people with an ethnologist’s eye saw a striking spectacle Thursday at the Victory Column. Speaker Barack Obama wasn’t the sensation, the crowd was. The rapture in their eyes, the strong emotion, the willingness to get enthusiastic, all that offered something very interesting. Obama has charisma, even though in this speech he came across less virtuous than usual. But this Obama is also in the eye of the beholder. What began as an appearance by a presidential candidate became a phenomenon when his speech turned into a dialogue with the crowd.

Suddenly, we were all Americans again. What was for many years seen as anti-Americanism was blown away. Gone was the identification of America with George W. Bush, the amalgam of resentment, the always destructive stereotypes that come to us across the north Atlantic: fast food, consumerism, imperialism, Hollywood, Nike and Disney.

Messianic Expectations

The characterization of this emotional cocktail as “anti-Americanism” always had a hint of being premature. It ignored the fact that in a love-hate relationship, love was a necessary precondition for hate. This “anti-Americanism,” if we even want to call it that, was likewise a phenomenon of disenchanted love. It was as though George W. Bush and his gang, along with America’s conservatives, had hijacked our imaginary America. The egalitarian America in our minds was the America of Greenwich Village, Bob Dylan, Woodstock. It was the America whose songs our generation grew up with, songs that gave us a soundtrack for our fantasies of freedom ever since our adolescence. One can only really hate Bush’s America if one worships that imaginary America. That America is not a delusion, not merely a mirage. It’s the America we connect with real experience. It’s the America of GIs helping the defeated enemy, an army of slave-drivers, to their feet again with chewing gum and the Marshall Plan in their back packs. This good America is now embodied in Barack Obama.

The frustration unleashed by Bush is being repaid to Obama in converted money: as unconditional affection, spiced with a pinch of messianic salvation hopes. He’s ideal for this not just because he says the right words but because he embodies a certain body politic. “I’m speaking to you as a citizen of the world,” he told the cheering crowd. That’s more than just a nicely turned phrase from a man with a Kenyan father and a mother from Kansas who spent his formative years in Indonesia. He learned from his childhood days to see the world through other eyes as well as through the eyes of others. This ability that enables him to connect completely different milieus is also the secret of his meteoric rise.

With all hype come the voices of those who will warn us. “Obamania” is pre-programmed with disappointment from the start. Not that much will change in US foreign policy. Finally, the USA will remain the world’s only hyper-power and will look to its own interests first. Obama will reach an accommodation with conservatives, the military, the multi-nationals, in short, with everybody the average liberal sees as the axis of evil. That sounds realistic, but why is this realism so damned hard to distinguish from plain old grumpiness? Sure, it’s possible Obama will disappoint us in exactly the same way Tony Blair awakened hopes and was unable to deliver. But why this insistence on disappointment that almost looks like a lust for suffering?

Bill Clinton didn’t accomplish a great deal, but there is a world of difference between the spirit of Clinton’s cooperative leadership and the “us-against-them” mentality of the Bush people. And, secondly, after 1994 Clinton was a prisoner, chained by the bitterness and obstructionism of a reactionary congress.

Realistic Idealist

Obama would be the strongest Democratic president since Lyndon Johnson, who once said he didn’t want to be president, he wanted to be a great president. At least conditions now don’t make that impossible for Obama. He is a “realistic idealist,” writes Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek magazine. It’s this fine breed of men who change the world. Grumpy pessimism and a certainty that there’s nothing to be gained have never inspired anyone to get involved. Let’s look at it this way: If we wanted to envision an ideal, modern, progressive politician, it’s reasonably certain Barack Obama would be the result. If I have a choice between fusty liberal defeatism and Obamania I wouldn’t have to think for very long: Trust the hype!