It was all over, bar the shouting, this week. Barack Obama’s landslide victory had become a foregone conclusion in October even for those who intended to vote Republican, as Andrew Kohout, President of Pew Research pointed in The New York Times (October 30, 2008).
It was an even-Stevens race until mid-September, the Republicans having gained considerably from the selection of Sarah Palin as their vice-presidential nominee. This had prompted me to wonder in these pages “why Obama wasn’t ahead by 15 points in polls as he was running against possibly the most unpopular administration ever.” (“Barack versus Barracuda,” September 14, 2008). I had also observed that while “personalisation of the two tickets seems to have pushed ...economic issues, including the banking and sub-prime crisis, reform of medicare and social security and rising deficit into the background... (t)hings could change.”
Who could have foreseen that they would indeed, and the very next day? History seldom allows its students the luxury of pinpointing a pivotal date for momentous happenings. December 7, 1941, the day of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor is one such. It changed the course of the Second World War and all that has happened since. Obama’s victorious march to the presidency can be similarly traced to September 15, 2008, the date of the demise of Lehman Brothers and the effacement of Merrill Lynch.
Even though the Obama polls rose steadily in the last six weeks, the pundits were not always sanguine about his victory. All the polls had predicted that Thomas Bradley, a hugely popular African-American Mayor of Los Angeles, would win the California governorship in 1982, yet he lost. Accepted wisdom is that most voters lied to the pollsters, hiding their racial prejudice behind a politically correct answer. This was dubbed as the Bradley factor and preyed on the minds of most analysts in 2008, which saw an African-American nominee for the first time. The fact that Obama had won his primary battle against Hillary Clinton in most lily-white states with convincing margins did not offer much comfort, as the blue-collar white working class (tagged Joe Sixpack, later morphing into McCain’s “friend” Joe the Plumber) was expected to succumb to racial prejudice.
This did not happen to any appreciable extent. State after state with large white working class populations voted for Obama, including Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and New Jersey, the so-called rust-belt. In fact, McCain had ceded Michigan, the home of the auto industry, to Obama a month before the election by suspending campaign spending there. Many factors could have contributed to this outcome, including disillusionment with Palin, the queen of gaffes, McCain’s own judgment on critical issues, and Obama’s calm demeanour even in the face of scurrilous attacks on his patriotism. But the overwhelming issue was the economy in crisis. Obama was clearly seen as having not just a better understanding of the problem but also a possible plan to tackle it. All future aspirants to that high office would do well to bear in mind firmly the old advice reportedly given to Bill Clinton, “It’s (still very much) the economy, stupid!” with emphasis on my parenthetical addition.
Obama assumes the reins of a deeply troubled nation at a critical moment in its history. Although the twenty-first century began with near-universal acceptance of the US being the sole superpower, the last few years have not been too kind for the American self-esteem. 9/11 shattered forever the apparently impregnable Citadel America. Its current commander-in-chief repeatedly asserts that the country is winning its war against global terror, even as its chief perpetrator appears every now and then to taunt and threaten, like some knock-me doll. Iran keeps mocking America and Iraq is not any safer for democracy, despite regime change and five years of war which has cost the US trillions of dollars. American threats of boycotts and sanctions do not seem to work even against the disaster-prone tinpot dictators of Burma and Zimbabwe.
The economy, once the bedrock of American power, has unravelled like never before. The initial reaction all over the world was to treat this as a made-in-and-for-the-US crisis, but now it has engulfed all economies. Every bourse is in the retreat mode and no one knows where the bottom is. That is only the tip of the iceberg. OECD economies would be in recession in 2009 and maybe even beyond. The go-go economies of India and China will not be spared either. Yesterday’s superstars from Eastern Europe, Hungary and Ukraine are already at IMF’s doors and who knows when others such as Poland might join the queue?
The world in trepidation again looks to the much-diminished US, this time not so much for rescue (this is now beyond the ability of any one country, unlike the post-war period), but for a clue to redemptive action. This places an even greater burden on the incoming Obama administration. It must not only repair the damage to the American economy and psyche, but also assume yet again global leadership of a fire-fighting nature. No other country has either the wherewithal or the attitudinal ability to think beyond its borders.
Franklin D Roosevelt became president in 1933 in arguably worse circumstances and rose to great heights in tackling successfully the Great Depression and the Second World War (some believe that the latter actually helped overcome the economic crisis).
David Brooks, a conservative columnist of The New York Times, recently said that some presidential nominees are “propelled by... self-efficacy, the placid assumption that they can handle whatever the future throws at them. Candidates in this mould, most heroically FDR and Ronald Reagan, are driven upward by a desire to realise some capacity in their nature. They rise with an unshakable serenity that is inexplicable to their critics” (October 16, 2008). He places Obama, with his inner calm and balance, in this category.
The allusions to the Second World War here are not accidental. William Bennett, former Secretary of Education, no fan of Obama’s, said that Obama’s victory would have the most salutary impact on how the rest of the world views the US since its winning that war.
“It’s been a long time coming,” as Obama said in his post-election speech full of amazing grace, but “change has come to America.” Let’s hope it comes to the world at large, too, and not a day too soon, at that.
