Barack Obama: Igniting imaginations around the world.

Liberation, France

If Barack Obama Becomes U.S. President …

"Disgraced today throughout the four corners of the globe, America would in a single leap resume its lost grace, its capacity to inspire the imagination, that combination of myth and reality that makes it the country of all possibilities – the democracy par excellence that has such power of seduction and likeability, despite all of its gaping flaws."

By Bernard Guetta

Translated By Sandrine Ageorges and Pascaline Jay

January 9, 2008

France - Liberation - Original Article (English)

Significantly less stupid in the White House, totally admirable in Iowa, America is reshuffling its cards. Threatened by recession, mired in Iraq and confronting an unprecedented loss of global prestige, she reinvents, changes and innovates, as one would begin a new life after years of wandering.

If today's New Hampshire primary confirms Thursday’s caucus result, and a mixed-race man in his forties named Barack Hussein Obama – he's no John Smith –stands a good chance of embodying the power of the United States in one year.

This is something that TV series' and Hollywood have long anticipated. For decades now, Blacks have been running major cities and have served in the House of Representatives. For eight years under Condoleezza Rice and before her Colin Powell, Blacks have overseen American diplomacy. But a Black man married to a Black woman - a Black family in the White House - that would be a second emancipation, a genuine one - for the descendents of slaves who remain on the sidelines in America.

With this amazing result the page would be turned, shame overcome, American society would draw new strength and new and legitimate pride that would bring cohesion, and the earthquake on the international scene would be even greater.

Disgraced today throughout the four corners of the globe America would in a single leap, resume its lost grace, its capacity to inspire the imagination, that combination of myth and reality that makes it the country of all possibilities – the democracy par excellence that has such power of seduction and likeability, despite all of its gaping flaws.

After the Bush years, it would be a total image reversal, as fruitful and necessary as when America under Roosevelt became the global locomotive of the welfare state, social protections, or under Kennedy, when idealistic young people united and mobilized against racial discrimination.

But is it a done deal?

No, it isn’t. It isn't even close to done - beside that fact that a state as rural and White as Iowa has understood the value of the Obama card; beside the fact that the man who announced in regard to Iraq, “I'm not against all wars, I'm against idiotic wars,” continues to rise in the polls; beside the fact that this son of a Kenyan, “as black as coal” and an American “as white as milk” has stirred a failing hyperpower; who will it be if not him?

New candidates can compete and disrupt the game, but imagine what would happen if now or later, Hillary Clinton took the lead. In another revolution, a woman would become President of the United States, the child of the protest generation [the 1960s] and a woman of the left, who despite all of her efforts to conquer the White House, was originally far more concerned about social reform than her husband. The hatred expressed against her by the conservative right says that her election would be anything but indifferent, less stunning than that of Obama, but all the same equally promising and radical.

Let’s now suppose that John Edwards becomes the Democratic nominee. This is an opponent of untamed capitalism, a champion of the middle class and avenger of the “greediness” of the gluttons of Wall Street, who take command in Washington.

Let us finally suppose that John McCain wins the Republican nomination and then, who knows? The presidential election in a dramatic turn of events would bring to the White House the noblest figure on the American right, the man who tried to bring morality to campaign financing before leading the battle and scoring points against the use of torture. Whatever the outcome of the primaries, an American renaissance is in the works, so urgent and essential that George Bush himself initiated it. While people vote in New Hampshire tonight, he takes off for the Middle East, having decided not to end his term on office without putting an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This is even less of a done deal than an Obama victory, but before calling it programmed to fail, it would be timely to measure the magnitude of the changes in the region. Israel and the Palestinian leadership, America and the Arab regimes now have not one but two common enemies: Shiite Islam and Iran. This reality is so strong that it has even penetrated the mind of George Bush. His priorities have changed. The priority of America has become this peace, the stone upon which it will rebuild its influence.

Bernard Guetta is a member of the supervisory board of Libération.

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