The right man at the right time

Aylin D. Miller

16 years ago

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TDN den bir alinti,

Thursday, November 6, 2008

MUSTAFA AKYOL

WASHINGTON – On the very last night of his tireless, 21-month-long campaign for the presidency, Senator Barack Obama, who is now appropriately termed “President-elect,” spoke to a huge crowd in Manassas, Virginia. In a vast open field, he found almost 100,000 people who had been waiting for hours to hear his voice. And I was among them.

Manassas is just an hour drive from the U.S. capital. But that day, it took me five hours to get there and three hours to come back. It must have been the same for all those Obama sympathizers who hit the jam-packed road to see the most stellar American politician in decades, the night before his very likely victory. What made all this even more remarkable is that Virginia has been a “red state,” one that votes repeatedly Republican, for almost 40 years. But it was time for change for Virginia, like several other formerly red states that have gone “blue” and embraced the Democratic candidate.

The Obama nation:

“Change” and “hope” have been the two major themes of Obama’s campaign. These are very relevant mottos, first of all, the current situation of the United States. Eight years of Republican rule has left behind a disastrous war, an irritated world and a ruined economy. President Bush turned out to be one of the least popular presidents of all time. So, in one sense, it was only natural for Americans to look for a new direction.

But Obama did a great job in channeling that search into mass support for his campaign. In other words, his personal qualities have played a major role in the spectacular rise of the “Obama nation,” as one harshly critical book title named it. First, he is a man of charisma. His face and posture have iconic-like features that one can clearly see in the countless numbers of Obama pins, t-shirts and posters these days on American streets. His language is not just intellectually sound but also popularly accessible. He knows how to create simple mottos to promote complicated policies. “We do not need a big government or a small government as it is endlessly debated,” he said to the Virginian crowd Monday night. “That is an old debate.” What Americans need, he argued, was “smart government, effective government.”

Just like that, Obama discharges deep-seated frictions in U.S. politics and takes people to a whole new, and different level. One thing he did was to move beyond poisonous partisan politics that his opponents, and most notably the often clueless Sarah Palin, have used. Obama was labeled by them as “a friend of terrorists,” a “radical socialist” and a collaborator with enemies of United States. Yet he did not return the disfavor. As he emphasized in the Virginia rally, although his campaign strongly criticized the Republicans, it never lowered the tone to the level of insult and libel. He did not even hesitate in acknowledging the virtues of his rival. “In the previous years Senator McCain has differed from George Bush on issues such as torture and global warming,” Obama said. “He deserves credit for that.” But the Republican candidate, he added, was as wrong as President Bush on his economic policies.

Obama also rejected the red states/blue states division that has characterized American politics for decades. “There is no red America, or blue America,” he declared to enthusiastic Virginians. “There is only the United States of America!”

The president of the world

Apparently, Obama’s presidency will be a fresh start for Americans. It will be good for them to get out of the economic crisis and build some consensus on social issues. What I am more interested in, though, is how it will be for the world.

I have hope that his presidency will allow us to build a reconnection and reconciliation between America and the rest of the globe. This is much needed, because the unilateralist, militarist, you-are-either-with-me-or-against-me- years of Bush, have created a deep rift between the two. Yet with the rise of Obama, who promised a much more sensible approach in foreign policy, the world found a hope. As polls show, he has gained an impressive popularity among the world’s nations. If he had run in Europe, he probably would have won any election he entered. He is popular even in the Muslim world.

If McCain were elected, he would be the president only of America. And perhaps even only red America. But now Obama has the chance to be the president of the world.

This is really an opportunity that he should not miss and the rest of us should help him succeed. Whether we like it or not, we non-Americans have to live with the United States, because it is the only superpower in our increasingly troubled planet and whether they like it or not, Americans have to live with the rest of the world, because they cannot design it in the way they wish. What we need is dialogue instead of conflict, and hope instead of fear, which Obama genuinely promises. He simply is the right man at the right time.

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