Before and After

The year 2008 will pass into North America’s – and, to the extent it belongs, the world’s – political history as one of before and after, as the end of one era and the beginning of another. Electoral campaigns will no longer be organized in the same manner, nor will they be financed as they have been until now; candidates will interact with voters differently; the record participation will have lasting effects and society will have taken an enormous step toward the stitching of one of its oldest and deepest wounds: slavery.

As with every revolution, 2008’s wasn’t accomplished in a day. In the elections of 2000, and especially 2004, the Republican machine operated by Karl Rove put a million volunteers to work in an effort to reach voters based on analyzes of complex data bases. In 2004, Democrat, and one-time presidential aspirant, Howard Dean discovered the possibilities of the Internet for organizing bases and raising funds. And, four years ago, participation jumped massively.

But now everything has multiplied. In the case of Barack Obama’s campaign – masterfully directed by David Axelrod – those heightened elements have succeeded in connecting with the large-scale incorporation of information consumers. The combination of “Yes, We Can” with YouTube – the engine of mass technology driving the traditional message – has been explosive.

And yet, when 76% of Americans believe that the country is on the wrong track, all of this is secondary. Obama’s organization – first against Hillary, later against McCain – was spectacularly effective, but we’re talking about something much bigger; the money spent in 2008 shattered records, but that will happen again in another four years. No; it’s about a new frontier, like the one marked by John F. Kennedy almost a half-century ago, of a shared vision, of another direction and another time. It’s about the twenty-first century.

In an election decided by the economy, with the memory of the incompetence and mishandlings of the last eight years and a social landscape where diversity and fusion are affirmed, before and after have changed. It is a change marked by hope, not by fear and the echo of 9/11. The most important before is related, marginally, to McCain’s small rupture with Bush; the most important after, especially, to the figure of Obama. “I think the great message is the renovation of the American dream,” says Carl Meacham, the senior professional staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who, as the son of an African-American man and Chilean woman, knows intimately of what he speaks when reminding that Obama is the son of a black African and a white woman from Kansas. And to better explain the revolution, an irresistible question: “Could something like this happen in Europe, or in Spain? Could we elect a president that is half Spanish, half Dominican, Ecuadorian, or Moroccan?”