Obama's Run: The
'Miracle' of America that Could Change the World
"In
the United States where the relationship between Black and White remains
burdened by old guilt and fresh resentment, this marks a turning point in
civilization. But the election battle now playing out in the United States will
not only alter America.
If no giant
scandal, assassination attempt or other misfortune occurs against all
expectations and throws things into disarray, Barack Obama's nomination as the
Democratic Party's presidential candidate for the November 4th elections is
secure. That in itself is an epochal step: Never before in the history of
American democracy - or any democracy - has a Black candidate stood such a good
chance of being elected to a country's top position by a White majority.
In the U.S.A., where the relationship between Black and White remains
burdened by old guilt and fresh resentment, this marks a turning point in
civilization. But the election battle now playing out in the United States will
not only alter America.
At the moment, it's virtually inconceivable that a major party in any
European country would elect a politician of Black-African origins to be their
leading candidate. We Europeans - and particularly us Germans - live with this
reality quite unconsciously and totally at ease; it seems normal and is taken
for granted that the leading representatives of our country have the same skin
color as the majority. But this normalcy also means that German citizens
with a certain skin color must remain excluded - regardless of whether they
have a German passport, were born in Germany, speak German, Swabian or
Saxonian.
EUROPE TOO, MUST CHANGE
This is, if we follow this line of reasoning through to the end -
racism. We tend to live with it rather uncaringly and unconsciously - unless of
course we are of German-African origin. And it is precisely at this point that
Obama's success changes us as well. The day that Obama has the Democratic
nomination in the bag, cracks will begin to appear in our collective innocence.
It will shatter completely when a Black family moves into the White House in
January 2009. And this shift
in awareness which would go hand-in-hand with our shattered innocence, would
not bypass the rest of Europe. Suddenly we would have to ask ourselves
questions we have never asked before. Indeed - what would it mean to us if the
child or grandchild of an African became a candidate for the chancellorship?
The answer is a recognition that unless we want a society in which skin color
predetermines the awarding of offices and influence, much of Europe will have
to change its mindset.
SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE SPOOFS
OBAMA-HILLARY
The fact that Obama has
been nominated as the presidential candidate of the Democrats - and that he has
almost won - is the first miracle. After all, Hillary Clinton was and still is
a highly intelligent, sophisticated, tough and politically-shrewd opponent. She
fought hard and has not yet abandoned the fight. The outcome of the West
Virginia primary just a few days ago confirmed that a significant number of
low-income White voters prefer Hillary Clinton and have a problem voting for
Obama. Senator Clinton received more than twice as many votes as her rival. The
second and even greater miracle will be if a majority of Americans actually
vote for Obama on November 4th.
No Democrat since the First
World War has conquered the presidency without winning in poor, White West
Virginia: Facts like these are Clinton's last remaining argument. For many
voters the problem with Obama is not only the color of his skin. It is rather that the candidate, with his
polished elegance forged in elite schools, is so distant from the jingoistic,
ultra-religious, gun-crazy traditions of the United States; that he appears to
be part of the elite that looks down with contempt on this insular segment of
American society. It is the knowledge that
for many decades, Obama sat and listened to a pastor whose sermons are
considered radically left-wing by the standards of White America. And it's the
fact that his full name is Barack Hussein Obama, and that he spent part of his
childhood in a Muslim country with a Muslim family. There are still Democratic
voters who stand in front of a running camera and declare that Obama is a
Muslim and is therefore unelectable.
"I'm kinda
like in a candy store," Floyd Brown, the notorious creator of the most aggressive Republican election
campaign commercials of recent decades, told the London newspaper, The Times.Ever since the presidency of Jimmy Carter,
the Republicans have managed to consistently claim that American ethos of
bearing arms, the patriotic manliness they claim for themselves - even if in
real life their candidate, just like the current president, is a weaker
embodiment of exactly that ideal. This is
how during the 2004 election campaign, the Republicans succeeded in depicting
Vietnam veteran John Kerry, who was running against Vietnam draft-dodger George
W. Bush, as anti-military. And in this election campaign, their candidate John
McCain is a genuine war hero, who as a prisoner of war endured years of torture
at the hands of the Vietnamese.
RECONCILIATION WITH HISTORY
Obama is aware of his weak
points. Some time ago he began wearing pins with the American flag on his lapel
- despite his professed view that flag pins are a dubious way of demonstrating
one's patriotism. He offers the conservative camp such a target for
fear-attacks that this election battle could be one of the toughest in decades.
For the United
States, this is therefore about much more than simply choosing between a White
and a Black candidate. If Obama wins, not only will it be a first step in reconciling
America with a history marked by racial conflict. It would be the strongest
signal yet that the frenzied, paranoid jingoism - and with it torture,
arbitrary detention and negligent wars of aggression - imposed by elements of
the political right after September 11th 2001 - has finally lost its dominance. After eight years of George W. Bush, the rest of
the world deserves such a signal just as much as the United States.
*Thomas Klau is an FTD
columnist and heads the Paris Office of the European Council on Foreign
Relations.
