Obama of the past
Reading Barack Obama’s speech, with which he accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination as its candidate in the presidential election, I felt envious of the way in which the Americans choose their leaders. The candidates are obliged to visit every corner of the land and listen to the problems of citizens, so that they can both shape and present the policies on the basis of which they will seek votes. We do this in Europe too, but in each country separately: We cannot all vote together for the president who, with his or her team, will lead Europe, that potential other superpower. Obama’s speech in Denver on Thursday was a clever synthesis of all that he is and all the things he had seen and heard during his long march to the nomination. The frequent references to the problems faced by women, workers, low-income households, the ill, injured war veterans and pensioners were at the heart of his speech. He associated them with his own adventure, in which he, the son of a single working mother managed to study, to get ahead, to be elected to the Senate and to now seek his country’s presidency. He wanted to show that he is an ordinary American, just like the people to whom he referred, and not the inexperienced favorite of the elite, as his rivals present him. At the same time, with his tale of transformation and victory, he wanted to tell his audience that they too can bring about change in their lives, by voting for him. Obama was toughened up by the electoral process. He got to meet and listen to voters and he gained experience that he lacked when the campaign against the other Democrat candidates began. The process shaped the candidate. As Obama noted: «The change we need doesn’t come from Washington. Change comes to Washington. Change happens because the American people demand it – because they rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time.» As a European I felt envy when Obama spoke about America’s power. «This country of ours has more wealth than any nation, but that’s not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military on Earth, but that’s not what makes us strong. Our universities and our culture are the envy of the world, but that’s not what keeps the world coming to our shores,» he said. «Instead, it is that American spirit – that American promise – that pushes us forward even when the path is uncertain; that binds us together in spite of our differences; that makes us fix our eye not on what is seen, but what is unseen, that better place around the bend.» This American faith in the future works as a self-fulfilling prophecy, whereas the concern of Europeans is not so much for a better future but rather how they will maintain what they have already achieved. Those were my thoughts, until the end of the speech, when Obama summed up the aims of his campaign. «America, we cannot turn back,» he said. «Not with so much work to be done. Not with so many children to educate and so many veterans to care for. Not with an economy to fix and cities to rebuild and farms to save. Not with so many families to protect and so many lives to mend. America, we cannot turn back. We cannot walk alone. At this moment, in this election, we must pledge once more to march into the future.» The future, in other words, demands an improved education system, the securing of health care for all, the protection of the social security system, and so on. In the most important speech of his life, at the moment that he was revealing his vision of the future, Obama, the candidate of «Change,» spoke almost exclusively about the past. A better future means a return to the old values and to a lost sense of security. That future is Europe’s present. It is us that others envy. But we do not seem to have realized it: Instead of strengthening our union in order to safeguard and further develop what we have, each country sinks into its own problems and we allow the vision of a strong Europe to vanish. And it takes a visionary and charismatic American to show us what we have.
