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The Benetton candidate

Wednesday, 20th August 2008

The Spectator on the rise of Barack Obama

When R.A. Butler, quoting Bismarck, described politics as the ‘art of the possible’, he was spelling out the pragmatist’s creed. Yet, if nothing else, Barack Obama’s rise to become the Democrats’ candidate for the White House shows that ‘the possible’ can still be extraordinary. Only four years ago, Obama was a mere state senator in Illinois, a rookie legislator with a keen intellect and a bright future. Now, as his party gathers for its convention in Denver, Colorado, he is only two and half months away from the presidential election that could make him the most powerful man in the world.

Whatever deals are being stitched up behind the scenes, this convention will be a pageant in celebration of the Obama Myth, a cross between the Nuremberg rallies and an aromatherapy festival. The candidate’s biography — the son of a black Kenyan and a white American who rose to the very top — will be presented as a metaphor for multiracial America’s longing to put behind it the politics of division, race hate and culture wars. His undoubted glamour and performing genius will be used to symbolise the longed-for break with the Bush years. The incumbent President may be the scion of a great political dynasty, the implication will be, but Obama is a prince of a different sort: his political magic the product of charisma rather than bloodline. No less than Bill Clinton in 1992, Obama will offer voters the choice: ‘Change, or more of the same’.

It would be very surprising if this long-planned exercise in political choreography is not impressive in the same way that the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics was impressive. At the same time, it should be remembered the world over that this is more than a show, a feel-good fantasia for those jaundiced by the Bush presidency and the trials of the Iraq conflict. It is also a chance to appraise and scrutinise the man who would be 44th President of the United States.

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Philoktetes

August 22nd, 2008 8:34pm

When I saw "The Benetton Candidate" I laughed. What a perfect description: self-righteous, cooly self-aware, politically correct, Marxist.

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