A. Harruna Attah
3 November 2008
column
Tomorrow, Tuesday November 4 2008, the world will be waiting to exhale. Would Americans accede to the wish of the world and make Barack Obama their next President? A BBC global poll a month or two ago showed that if the rest of us were allowed to vote in the US elections Mr. Obama would win by a large margin.
The crowd which turned out to hear him in Berlin two months ago was testimony to that global wish. Would America spurn this immense good will that is beginning to build up?
The world loves America; even those who profess such hate for America and would wish to rain and have rained harm on America - they are such a miniscule minority of the world - even they recognize the supremacy of America in world affairs and want to be recognized and accepted by America. US elections are therefore world elections and none more so, than what is going to take place tomorrow.
It is not as if the world does not like Mr. McCain. The world respects and holds him in high esteem. The world recognizes that he has the ability and capability to become a good president but what the world is saying loud and clear is this: "This is not McCain's time!"
Barack Obama has captured the world's imagination because he represents for us all what America stands for, in Obama's own words, "The Audacity of Hope". From when Amerigo Vespucci/Christopher Columbus saw the New World to when an American became the first human to set foot on another celestial body it's been one audacity to the other leading to tomorrow's polls that could and should give a new direction to a 300+ year history of audacious acts.
Donald Rumsfeld, former US Secretary of Defense, in the build-up to the Iraq invasion, out of pique that Europe was not going along with his country's foreign policy, described those countries as "Old Europe" but paradoxically, because of those kinds of words and deeds, America itself now looks old and tired in the eyes of the world, a world which is using these elections to ask for a new New World.
We are told not to use the "n" and "r" words in the argument, and rightly so, but the fact still remains that Mr. Obama is your white kid next door; Mr. Obama is your black kid next door; the DNA is as American as can be. When the founding European settlers first landed on the shores of the New World and met the original Amerindian settlers of the vast subcontinent, to when the first African slaves (forced migrants) landed, it's been one rich gene pool that is now, after all these centuries, about to settle after its long evolutionary journey.
Mr. Obama, in a sense transcends Democrat/Republican politics and stands for American social, political and racial (that "r" word has slipped through!) growth. A growth that is at once evolutionary and at the same time revolutionary. He represents the Great Dream - the Dream of Martin Luther King Jnr. and the Great American Dream.
If Americans know what is good for them - and they sure do a lot of times - they would put the "n" and "r" words to final sleep tomorrow and Microsoft Word in its spell check can recognize the name Barack or Obama as being as American as McCain or Bush or Clinton or Van Buren or Roosevelt or Lieberman or Armstrong or Jackson or Gore or Biden or yes, or even Palin... America can only be enriched by that and God will continue to Bless America...
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