Obama’s Message

In his State of the Union address, Barack Obama began to put the United States of America in a new global context. After a half century of the Cold War, in which the U.S. defeated the Soviet Union, after eight years of self-congratulation and blindness, “preventive attack” and the overturning of diplomacy, all of it carried out by the Bush administration — after all this, Barack Obama has restored reality and updated it. The United States is no longer the only power, and “rival” powers now were called only yesterday “Third World countries”: China, India, Brazil… countries with low salaries.

This doesn’t mean that the United States has ceased to be the world’s strongest power. Basically, it still is, but in a new and more competitive world context. “The world has changed,” said Obama; making his fellow countrymen understand that is difficult but necessary. After Bush’s “lost decade,” the U.S. should again “win the future.” To do this, it should transition from the industrial revolution to the technological revolution. It should confront and resolve the problems that hold it back: an unemployment rate that surpasses 9 percent, a giant budget deficit. In contrast, we see large capital gains and a rising stock market.

To balance these factors, Obama proposes various actions that can be summed up in the formula: renovate, educate, build. The emphasis for Obama is on education. Teachers should obtain and deserve respect. There is no excuse for a bad teacher. Good teachers are a national necessity. No child can, or should, be left behind. The basis of elementary education prepares the students for access to a university education.

The subsidies given today to the banks should be given, now, to schools. Cutting the budget for education would leave the U.S. farther behind in relation to China and India, whose students continue to attend, in greater numbers and quality, American universities. Education, lastly, is the path that leads from the industrial revolution to the technological revolution. Cutting education is a formula for backwardness, and in the long run, disaster. No education is like flying an airplane without machinery. Illusion leads to deception and deception to disaster.

If I highlight the theme of education in Obama’s speech, it’s because no other theme hits closer to the reality in Latin America. To renovate and hold accountable teachers, to take teaching to places far from our continent, to improve the quality of university studies, are themes on which our future depends. It’s best to read with caution what Obama says on the matter.

Another of the American president’s themes is green energy and green jobs. The age of oil is over and that of clean energy begins. Obama anticipates that by 2050, there will be a million electric cars on the road, and that by 2035, there will be a notable increase in clean energy sources — the energy of tomorrow. Brazil understands this reasoning. It has discovered oil, but has given preference to alternative or clean energy sources. Will Mexico follow suit?

It is on the topic of public health that Obama has found the greatest resistance. A sacred topic in Europe, it still finds opposition in the most reactionary sectors of American society. The very ignorant Republican congresswoman from Minnesota, Michelle Bachmann, believes that the first colonists of the United States came from Africa (!). Now, she rejects Obama’s health reform in the name of the individual right to choose doctors and hospitals. Forget that they reject those who need the most help: the terminally ill, and later, the elderly. Obama’s law overcomes these injustices. Bachmann represents the most retardant wing of the Republican Party, the tea party. It’s just like Alice in Wonderland, with the Mad Hatter and the Dormouse.

Obama is proposing a health law that extends to, without exploiting, the patients who most need it. He rejects the unjust formula of denying coverage based on preexisting conditions, and asks for the repeal of the discriminatory law, “don’t ask, don’t tell”, in favor of the liberty to serve openly in the armed forces.

The world has changed, Obama insists. Sometimes, it’s difficult for Americans to understand. The U.S. lost a decade congratulating itself, while China and India grew and the world built airports, highways and railroads. Today, without losing its stature, but rather, confirming it for a new period, the United States should share its society with the rest of the world: China, India, Europe, Japan, Russia and Latin America. The U.S. is still the most prosperous nation. It will continue to be, as long as it knows how to shape its own destiny, how to find the best way to improve life, reinvent itself, educate, renovate and build.

Far behind Obama are his Republican critics, stuck in a world that no longer exists, but that they preserve like bananas that never ripen.