At dinner the other night I was asked, “Do you think he will live?” The he in question, of course, being Barack Hussein Obama. Nor was this the first time I’d been asked this. I suspect that such fears are more widely held than you might care to think. And that left me thinking that for all that there’s plenty of fine reporting from America in the British press, there has been, in some respects, a collective failure to understand how much the United States has changed. That is to say, it is always easier to focus upon tales of American weirdness, of gun-toting rednecks and bible-thumpers and all the rest of it. These are colourful parts of the American quilt, but they tend to receive disproportionate attention from the international press.
Of course, there are also plenty of Americans, as Dan Drezner suggests, who dismissed the possibility of a moment like this ever arriving too (as did a good number of African-Americans too) and only a fool would suggest that Obama’s election itself can end the agonising over race that has, quite naturally, been a central, if not always acknowledged, part of the American experience.
Britain’s best politics newsletters
You get two free articles each week when you sign up to The Spectator’s emails.
Already a subscriber? Log in
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in