Barack Obama finally begins to soothe soul of America
Barack Obama is not afraid to be angry anymore. He’s fighting for his agenda, he’s fighting back against the racism menacing his country, he’s fighting back for his place in history and he may well secure it even as the clock has begun ticking on his presidency.
The white supremacist Ku Klux Klan may have crept back on to the streets of America last week, the country may have been traumatised by the killings of nine black people within the sacred confines of their church last month, but none of that seems to deter Obama. Rather, it seems to be spurring him on to bring his country to a better place.
But it hasn’t always looked so possible. The odds from the beginning seemed stacked against him. His presidency sparks two vivid memories: one is the sound of thousands of feet pounding the streets of Washington at dawn on January 20, 2009, as people made their way to the inauguration of America’s first black president.
The second is of the silence of more than a million people outside the US Capitol as noon approached and Obama raised his right hand to take the oath of office.
It was, many believed then, a golden moment in the history of their country that could never be extinguished.
In some ways they were right as, side by side, black and white, they listened to the words of their young president. “A man,” he said in his inauguration speech, “whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant, can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.”
Many, overcome with emotion and the burden of history, were unable to hold back tears. I remember an elderly black woman beside me weeping uncontrollably as he spoke. They had come from every corner of America, where only decades earlier many had fought for civil rights and others had died for them.
Yet only the very young or the very foolish believed that day that everything would change, that their new president would somehow weave a magic spell from their-new found Camelot and fix their country.
That was never going to happen. You knew that if you had ever seen America close up, as I had over two decades as a journalist, witnessing its fears and contradctions, its pain and its promise.
All the bad stuff would not just suddenly disappear and be replaced by a new, all-caring society.
No, little more would be achieved —or be allowed to be achieved.
America is a country of more than 300 million people so it’s hardly surprising that there are really many Americas.
There’s the one made up of gun-loving crazies and racists and all kinds of other fanatics; the one that tries to care about others but is too busy caring about itself; the one that couldn’t care less; the one just getting by; the jobless one; the one that fears getting ill; the ridiculously rich one; and the best America — the one that makes the stranger feel more welcome than I have ever felt in any other country.
The surprise then is that once in a lifetime out of this vastness a person emerges to break the mould and try to fashion a better nation for everyone.
It is hardly surprising either that once he or she emerges, others seek to destroy that person because, unless they do, the emptiness they stand for themselves will be exposed for what it is.
And so, once noon had passed on January 20, 2009, and Barack Hussein Obama was inaugurated, the effort to destroy him and his presidency began.
It seemed like legitimate politics to block his policies. But, on closer examination, it was far more than that.
It was really about humiliating the uppity black man, vilifying him, crushing his will, the old tactics dressed up in modern clothing, finessed to fit a new century.
It was personal. It involved hate language and racist language and personal questions about his love of country and family. It involved bringing guns and racist placards to meetings against his healthcare reform plans.
His opponents were fired up. They knew how to work the system and were very well moneyed. Soon, many of his more naïve supporters began to desert him. They’d hoped for far too much, far too quickly.
The message that they’d got too little, that he was a political failure had been drummed into them. They began to believe it. He fell in polls.
Democrats made it obvious they wanted nothing to do with him by the time the 2014 mid-term elections came around. But they were defeated anyway in the Senate and House.
So he wasn’t really the problem. They were, they’d lacked the backbone to bite back, to tout the fact that he’d steered the country through the near collapse of a global economic system, while bringing unemployment down and boosting growth.
The middle class was right to say it wasn’t good enough but they were wrong not to acknowledge his progress.
All of which led economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman to dub him one of the most “consequential and successful” presidents in American history, who “delivered less than his supporters wanted, less than the country arguably deserved, but more than his current detractors acknowledge.”
From day one, Krugman said, Obama “faced scorched-earth Republican opposition”.
But then Barack Obama began to fight back. He’d always made it a rule to keep his anger in check so as not to frighten white people. But they’d already become frightened of themselves.
I happened to be back in America in June when the country was traumatised by the killings in South Carolina.
Barack Obama felt it in his soul, he said. He called it as he saw it.
People might have stopped using the N word, he said, but the sentiment was still lurking behind their new “politeness”.
“It [racism] is still part of our DNA,” he said after the killings. A few days later he delivered a eulogy for the nine killed within the sacred confines of their church. Then, in an act of homage that will be long remembered, with microphone in hand he led the grieving families in singing ‘Amazing Grace’. Then, suddenly, the political agenda began to go his way: the Supreme Court first backed his healthcare reform, then gay marriage. And now, against the odds, he has secured a nuclear deal with Iran that is aimed at keeping the world safer. He’s begun normalising relations with Cuba.
e’s become the first sitting US president to visit prisoners in a federal prison and tell Americans they must begin to craft a better society.
So maybe the young and the foolish were right after all. Maybe his legacy will encompass far more than that ‘Camelot moment’ on Capitol Hill when he first took the oath of office.
His mark, it now seems, will be far more indelible on the pages of history. There, Barack Hussein Obama will most likely be seen as the man who finally healed America’s soul.
