Unyielding hope

8 November 2008

The Spectator on the US Presidential election

That is the past. What matters now is the future and the many questions that this thrilling result poses. Internationally, Obama’s victory will rout lazy anti-Americanism, at least for a while. But what his election will not do in and of itself is persuade the Iranians to give up their nuclear programme, or the Russians to co-operate with the West, or bring the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to a close. An early test of whether Obama can exploit his global popularity to advance sound geopolitical goals will be whether he can get Europe to step up to the plate in Afghanistan.

The best-case scenario is that the new President unites his country, moves America on from ‘identity’ politics and restores its image as a city upon a hill; that he is able to address the issue of race with an honesty that no white politician can; that his status as an African-American father enables him to take on the teachers’ union and create an education system that expands opportunity. The worst is that his newness and inexperience prove to be an end not a beginning: that he signs bad bills sent to him by an emboldened Capitol Hill; that he wrecks Nafta and takes the protectionist path; that he is simply overwhelmed by the scale of the crises he faces, as hapless a practitioner of the prose of government as he is a genius at the poetry of campaigning.

Yet such poetry should not be scorned or dismissed as merely a device of those seeking power. Politics needs its moments of poetry to renew faith in the political process, in lawmaking and policy formulation and in the fundamental operations of liberal democracy. When Obama spoke in his victory speech of ‘unyielding hope’, he spoke for all those, of whatever party or nation, who retain faith in the capacity of any society to improve and reinvigorate itself. That is a faith as noble as it is simple and, in an age of deep cynicism about politics, it is cheering to see that it has not died. The road ahead of this President will be rocky and full of peril. But for now it is right to salute his historic achievement, honour its grandeur, and relish its potential: a ‘newer world’ indeed.

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Giles Witton

November 10th, 2008 12:05am Report this comment

"Lazy Anti-Americanism" seems to me a misplaced epithet. What is lazy is the use of the term "Anti-Americanism" as a response to any criticism of the American government's policies, thus providing a convenient excuse for not facing up to that criticism.

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