Paul Tiyambe Zeleza
13 November 2008
(Page 2 of 3)
With such a tarnished record and a widely loathed president (one who suffered record low approval ratings), the Republican Party's chances of winning the elections were severely compromised. Such were the depths of the president's unpopularity that he was virtually quarantined from the campaign; hardly any republican candidate wanted to appear in public with him, not even the Republican nominee, John McCain. But there was no let up from the Obama-Biden and Democratic National Party campaigns, which relentlessly tied the Republican candidates and Senator McCain to their party's and president's records. The public heard the message that a McCain administration would represent the third term of the Bush presidency.
Senator McCain did not help his own candidacy by his rightward drift as he desperately sought to solidify support among the Republican base that had eluded him during the primaries and for much of a political career built on the vacuous label of 'maverick'. The longer the campaign ran, the more the candidate became unglued and the electorate saw a grumpy old man given to erratic behaviour, dishonesty, condescension, a sense of entitlement, and bad judgment. He changed his message with impetuous frequency pandering to populist fears, rightwing pundits, racist paranoia, unfavourable polls, and unpredictable events, with no consistent narrative, no clear indication of what a McCain administration would entail beyond pursuing the discredited Republican mantra of national security, low taxes, and divisive patriotism.
This was revealed quite glaringly and alarmingly in his inept response to the financial crisis and his self-serving fictitious suspension of his campaign, and most damagingly by his reckless and cynical choice of the clearly unqualified and overzealous Sarah Palin, who succeeded in firing both the Republican and Democratic bases and dragging the ticket down as her negatives piled the more her ignorance and fanaticism were exposed. The more the public saw the two campaigns - the McCain-Palin ticket and the Obama-Biden ticket during the crucial presidential and vice-presidential debates - the more the latter took the shine for calm competence, for steady and safe, even inspired, leadership.
Cynicism turned into farce as Joe the Plumber was discovered and elevated into the putative everyman of white America, the bulwark against Obama's redistributionist economics of 'welfare' and 'socialism', codes in Republican thinking for undeserving racial minorities and Democratic profligacy. Joe the Plumber's proverbial fifteen minutes of fame came after earlier charges that Obama palled around with domestic terrorists seemed to leave no traction; indeed they appeared to backfire for their meanness and irrelevance. The choice of Professor Bill Ayers, a 1960s radical, as Obama's terrorist comrade revealed the unfinished cultural wars of the 1960s, especially the bitter struggle over Vietnam in which the two, McCain and Ayers, represented the lingering conflict between the soldier and the anti-war activist.
But it would be gravely mistaken to attribute the historic victory of President-Elect Obama and the Democrats simply to a vote against Senator McCain and the Republicans. Their victory is a tribute to their own actions and agency. Senator Obama has been a historic candidate because of his personal and political biographies and the organisational novelties of his incredible campaign that crushed the formidable Clintons in the Democratic Party during the primaries, a contest that prepared him for his epic battle with the ruthless Republican campaign during the presidential elections.
As I have written in several commentaries on this site, Senator Obama has been a compelling candidate because he represented better than virtually all his opponents the quintessential American of the 21st century at a time when the country becomes more diverse and undergoes profound changes in its demographic, economic, spatial, social, and ideological dynamics. This is to suggest that there are different Obamas that appeal to various constituencies among the electorate and the imaginaries that collectively constitute this exceedingly complex and fascinating country. This is what, in part, lies behind his amazing political attractiveness, his charisma, the Obamania that has gripped the United States and the rest of the world.
There is Obama the black man, who embodies the dreams of African-Americans for full citizenship and redress from a long history of exploitation, oppression, and marginalisation. The fact that Obama is not a descendant of enslaved Africans, explains the earlier discourses around him in black communities as to whether he was 'black enough', which disappeared as soon as he became a credible electoral hope for the race during the primaries beginning with his stunning victories in the Iowa caucuses and on Super Tuesday. It also accounts for his popularity among many whites comfortable with a black man untainted by the unrequited memories of slavery and looking for redemption and a post-racial future.
Obama as the son of a foreigner invokes the cherished migrant narrative of American history in which non-African-Americans tend to see themselves as descendants of brave or heroic migrants who often came with little and prospered in their new homeland and left their offspring with the possibilities of the American Dream. Thus, the migrant narrative serves to ennoble American history, sanitising it of the indelible stains of the forced migrations of the enslaved Africans, while also providing a convenient mode of distancing between the historic and new African diasporas in this land of overlapping diasporas.
The biracial Obama, the offspring of a black Kenyan man and a white Kansas woman, appeals to people of mixed race whether those from contemporary interracial marriages or from much older unions who are tired of the one-drop rule and anxious to embrace their dual or multiple racial heritages. The biracial identity was given official recognition in the 2000 census, a reflection of the fact that the US is moving away from its historic black-white racial system into a multiple racial system common in parts of Latin America and Africa, and in keeping with the country's growing diversity as a result of increased migrations from Asia, Latin America, and Africa. As a biracial, Obama escapes exclusive black appropriation and identification and is more acceptable to whites than a typically 'black' candidate would have been.
For their part, recent African immigrants identify with Obama as one of them, a beacon of hope for their own offspring, a man whose life trajectory offsets the pains and perils of migration and affirms its opportunities and promises. This explains the enormous enthusiasm Obama's candidacy has generated among the new African diasporas many of whom for the first time began to actively participate in the American political process. President-Elect Obama's victory, it is safe to predict, will lead to more African immigrants in the United States to become citizens, to the strengthening of the often fraught relations between African-Americans and the new African immigrants.
Obamania extends to Africa itself and especially Kenya, the homeland of the new President-Elect's father. People across Africa have been following the elections with unusually avid interest. When Senator Obama's victory was announced celebrations broke throughout Kenya and elsewhere on the continent. Indeed, the entire world seems to have been electrified by this historic achievement, which has earned the United States some of the goodwill, the moral capital, it squandered so recklessly under the Bush years. The President-elect's global appeal springs in part from the fact that he is transnational in a way that none of his competitors in the primary and presidential elections were: he was brought up in Indonesia and has personal relatives scattered on several continents. The world has invested in Obama hopes of a more benevolent and multilateral America. For cosmopolitan Americans anxious for global respect, Obama offers an invaluable ticket to the world.
President-Elect Obama's historic victory owes much to the extraordinary prowess of his campaign, whose organisation is probably unmatched in American history. He and his managers built an electoral machinery of hope and audacity that was unprecedented in its innovativeness and reach by combining old-fashioned grassroots community organising, political rallies, and digital mobilisation from the Internet to cell phones in a seamless web of recruitment, networking and empowerment for campaign volunteers and supporters, voter registration drives, and fundraising. The results were astounding: they out-organised and out-fundraised the McCain campaign as they raked in more than $600 million from more than 3 million donors and opened thousands of offices across the country.
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reply to Kevin G Africa as a continent might be backward,but many Africans are not backward,and are better informed and better educated than many people from Europe,Asia and the Americas. You might want to do a web search on the writer of the article you are responding to and use that in testing my contention as well as measure yourself against his accomplishments.
America grows up wow just b/c America elected a black president and he happens to be of African descent has nothing to do with being grown up........ American politics is definately not run from Europe or anywhere else in the world but by Americans. I am sorry to burst your bubble but Obama is not the complete solution to America's problems or the worlds. We had problems before him and we will have problems after him. Obama is not the savior of the world and trust me Africa his focus will be on the US economy and so that does not mean more money for Africa. It is funny in how so many whites are called racists but many people love Obama for the color of his skin and has nothing too do with his politics. So many things he stands for your own cultures are so against but b/c he is black he is great, sorry no man is perfect...
America Finally Grows Up? This coming from the most backward, most ignorant continent on the planet?