This is slightly dated. But the opinions and sentiments still hold.
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IT’S A TOUGH TIME TO BE ELECTED PRESIDENT
Tuesday November 4,2008
By David Robson
THE United States will vote in Barack Obama as president, or I damn well hope so. All the polls say it, everything you see from here says so.
The Republicans are in disarray, arguing between themselves, apparently resigned to losing. John McCain long ago gave up promising what he could do for the US and concentrated on attacking Obama; meanwhile, Sarah Palin showed up her leader in more ways than one.
Rather like Diana with Charles, she was the one everybody wanted to see, the one who connected with people, the one whose arrival produced a surge of empathy, the one her partner’s people ended up briefing against. Palin has a magnetic attraction but we wouldn’t want her running her country, let alone the world. Not that the world is any longer America’s to run.
We have had the American Century. We shall not have another.
Two decades ago, an American academic said “the end of history” had arrived and we had reached a point where the whole world would realise that capitalism and liberal democracy was the way. He could not have been more wrong; 9/11 and America’s catastrophically wrongheaded response to it has produced something different – a world that despite all America’s firepower is beyond its control.
The earthquake in the financial system may signal the beginning of the end of US economic primacy as well. Its attitude in the rest of the 21st century will have to be different. It will no longer rule the world but it cannot stand back from it either.
Obama’s campaign has been awe-inspiring. Month after month, he hasn’t put a foot wrong. He has the gift of oratory and the gift of calm, grace and authority. He has the gift of youth. If Hollywood was casting for president, he’s the man they would choose. He has also had far more money to spend and an army of people more attuned to the internet age. He will have won this election on screen – the television screen and the computer screen. He is a winner not simply because he is more attractive but because he has been, in every sense, smarter.
McCain looks old and unconvincing, a man from a time that has passed. His calling card is his heroism when he was a prisoner in Vietnam and that is not much of a credential for leadership in the 21st century, especially when economic depression looms.
Still, the election could yet produce a shock. It could be closer to an Obama landslide than the polls predict, or maybe we have underestimated that country’s fearful conservatism. It isn’t over until the votes are counted (or miscounted).
To see the Obamas – this incredibly handsome and able black couple – in the White House will itself be a sign that a new era has begun.
America needs something new but this is a hellishly difficult moment to provide it. He will have to be a heck of a president to be as good as his words.
dailyexpress.co.uk |
