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ShareFor me, frankly, it's the last option. After that, Obama is a politician and he will have to do what all politicians have to do once they're in power: compromise on the promises they made to get there. We all know that.
And that's what's interesting here. The world has exploded in happiness, as if everyone's saviour has come. The battle has been won, Mordor has been defeated, Sauron is destroyed and the ring of evil is gone. Meanwhile, Neo has defeated the telephone wires and Superman is no longer affected by kryptonite. Many white countries who would never vote in a black premier themselves in spite of all the lectures that the USA gets from them are over the moon with happiness. Others feel the power of the election, some of which has to do with the extreme power of American television coverage. It was so smooth, real and exciting that we all felt that we were part of it.
But how do Americans feel? Just as an experiment, I signed an online petition of hope -- for want of a better way to describe it -- aiming to get a million messages to send to Obama, to be put up on a giant wall in Washington DC. I forwarded the petition to a random list of people from my address book. All the people who live in countries which are not the United States of America almost burst with happiness and responded with unbounded enthusiasm. Some expressed surprise that this message had come from me -- online petitions are clearly not my way of responding to the world.
But all the people who lived in the United States were less enthusiastic. Yes, they were Democrats, or yes, they loved the idea of Obama, but his policies made them wary.
Some felt that tax increases for the middle class is a frightening idea in a recession. Will Barack Obama, they asked, be the new FDR, leave the JFK legacy to the Clintons of the world, and give the US the New New Deal that it so badly wants? Will he, some wanted to be know, solve the health care crisis? Others felt that his stand on terrorism, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan were not very clear. Was he finally just as hawkish as George W? Would he, in fact, be able to translate his campaign promises into reality?
We're back, then, to square one. The world will have to live second or third hand with the consequences of Obama's actions (barring of course nations he may or may not choose to attack). But for those who have to spend at least the next four years with him, his policies are real and everyday. The hope factor warms their hearts, but how much will this much-vaunted change affect them?
Still, even wary Americans can take plenty of positives out of this election. Whatever his policies, Obama cannot be worse than Dubya. Even the comedians who miss him most will find something about Obama to laugh at. We in India had a similar situation with Rajiv Gandhi when he became a dreamy prime minister after his mother's assassination but after the honeymoon was over, the knives came out. The American economy is a horrific situation and whoever came in, Republican or Democrat, would have had to take drastic steps. Sarah Palin has gone back to Alaska. Joe the Plumber has vanished from the world's radar. We are all excited about which doggie the Obama girls are going to choose.
And, yes, the Americans did vote a half white-half black man into the most exalted office in their nation. They bucked the nay-sayers, the trends, years of prejudice and wrought in the most effective form of change possible. Whether Obama can or cannot, is a yes or a no, the American people have done it for him. They changed.
Email: b_ranjona@dnaindia.net
