Kayode Komolafe
5 November 2008
column
Lagos — Not a few pundits have said that if the choice of the next president of the United States of America were to be the business of the whole world the winner would inexorably be the candidate of the Democratic Party, Barack Obama. From all indices, such a claim is far from being extravagant.
With endorsements from even the most unlikely quarters and campaign funds coming from widespread supporters and polls put him well ahead, till election day, of his challenger, the candidate of the Republican Party, John McCain, it would be a spectacular reversal of trend if Obama does not win the election.
In classical terms, it would appear that there is an historic moment in the United States and Mr. Obama has simply seized it. To decode the Obama magic is to explore how he was politically equipped to sense the moment and what it has taken this undisputed man of history to recognise it.
So, in the last few days to the election some analyses have focussed on not just why Obama would win but also on the consequences of what seems like his irreversible victory. But then in liberal democratic politics, it is only safe to be probabilistic at best. You need to give room for the imponderables of the system, a system that proclaims all the virtues of liberal democracy but carries the baggage of huge democratic deficits. To borrow the phrase of a former United States Vice President, Senator Al Gore, it is an 'inconvenient truth" that politics in a liberal democracy anywhere is ultimately a game of the establishment. No establishment in history allows power to slip off its hands easily.
A due reference has been made to the experience of the late Tom Bradley who the polls said would win the gubernatorial election in California in 1982 but lost for reasons many felt were simply racist. Some other analysts have also reminded those consumed by Obamamania of how the mystery of Florida denied Senator Al Gore the presidency in 2000 with all the stories of butterfly ballots and how technology failed the most technologically developed country in matters of election.
However, whatever is said to be the verdict of the electorate in this election, the indelible verdict of history would be that Obama has dynamited the electoral process in the United States. The man has captured the imagination of not only Americans of all races but also the rest of the world that is not immune to the consequences of American politics. The evidence of what the Obama phenomenon has done to American politics is quite visible. Up till late last night, reports were that there was a record turnout for the election. According to the CNN, about 90% voters' turnout was expected in some states. About 130 million Americans are expected to vote. Before yesterday's election, about 29 million had already cast their votes. According to the American Centre for Responsive Politics, this presidential election has been the most expensive in the history of the most powerful nation on earth. The combined expenditures of the candidates on campaigns are put at $2.4bn. Some psephologists have estimated that the turnout would be the highest since 1960.
Obama conducted his campaign in a way that did not suggest that his race for the presidency of the United States was about his race. If he wins, American would have a president with an undeniable multi-cultural background. The Obama campaign was smart enough not to make his race an issue. To do otherwise would have been tactically ruinous for his strategic politics. Given the racial demography of the United States no one could win the presidential election without the majority of the white votes. In any case, Obama has inherited the genes of a black man and white woman in his DNA. Some African-Americans even insist that he is not a product of the Transatlantic Slave Trade with all the historic import it carries.
In one of the most remarkable speeches Obama made during the campaign in Pennsylvania on March 18, he strove to confront the question of race relative to his candidacy. Obama's opponents made an issue of an alleged hate speech made by Reverend Wright, who they associated with the presidential candidate. In confronting the allegation.
Obama took the opportunity to address the race question squarely. He reminded his fellow Americans of his belief in the promise of their founding fathers during the declaration of independence of a "more perfect union: This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.
I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slave owners - an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.
It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts - that out of many, we are truly one".
Yes, Obama has not said he is running a racial race. He has run as an American citizen for the presidency of the United States. Yet, if he wins his victory would summon memories of extant racial issues. One commentator said his victory would provoke tears. Some would add that it would be of tears of joy in the memory of pains of history. Unless one chooses to be hypocritical, the appreciation of the Obama phenomenon in Africa and the black world in general has been somewhat racial and emotive. For the son of a Kenyan who was a student in the United States barely 50 years to be the the favourite for American presidency in 2008 cannot but bring forth memories of the struggles of the black man for freedom and human dignity in the Western Hemisphere. What is more, if Obama wins today, it would be about two centuries after the formal abolition of slavery and 40 years after Reverend Martin Luther King made the "I have a Dream Speech" that gave so much impetuous to the struggles of blacks for social justice and human dignity in the Americas.
In a remarkably insightful piece published in this newspaper yesterday, former foreign Affairs minister, Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, examined what an Obama victory would mean to the black race. Akinyemi made an intellectually compelling argument when he wrote that:" A victory for Obama will be the ultimate catharsis in purging the African race of the stigma of slavery. As of now, even before the election results, every Blackman or woman feels a foot taller because of the Obama syndrome. The election of Obama rather than what he does in the office is the ultimate victory. But it is also a catharsis for the white race, purging it of its guilt over the slavery trade. An Obama victory will be the ultimate reparation (compensation)."
The truth is that the reaction to the Obama phenomenon especially from Africa has not all been about reason. Significantly, the response has been emotional. To be sure, there is a great of legitimacy to such emotions. But then that is where the challenge lies. His victory would be the climax of an historical process; but if it is not well handled it could turn our out to be an anti-climax. Enthusiasts of a possible Obama presidency in Africa ought to be wary of this development.
For instance, in a most condescending and reluctant endorsement, the Economist newspaper of London wrote this about Obama: The Economist does not have a vote. But if it did, it would cast it for Mr. Obama. We do so wholeheartedly: the democratic candidate has clearly shown that he offers the better chance of restoring America's self-confidence. But we acknowledge it is a gamble. Given Mr. Obama's inexperience, the lack of clarity about his beliefs and the prospect of a stridently Democratic Congress, voting him is a risk. Yet it is one America should take, given the steep road ahead.
The newspaper is urging America to take "chance" by electing Obama as the next president. Reference is made to this appreciation of the Obama phenomenon from a consciously rightist position just to show that if he becomes the next American president the challenges before him would be as phenomenal as his victory.
The import of the foregoing for the teeming Obama enthusiasts in Africa is that should he become president, Obama would be an American president whose duty would be to protect the interest of America. Beyond the historical symbolism and psychological relief of a black family residing in the White House, no one should nurture the illusion that the primary purpose of a possible Obama presidency would be more than American national interest.
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