America's Chance to Usher In Something New

I tend to be quite pragmatic about politics- as opposed to principle.
Because politics is the art of the practical. So often one has to accept that it really is soap powder politics. It's about competence, not principle.

The US Presidential elections are important to the rest of the world, no two ways about it. Why? Because the US is in the extraordinary position of being able to force it's wishes in defiance of anyone else. Sometimes, the rest of the world agrees. But it doesn't matter much if it doesn't. The US doesn't actually need the support of the UN to carry out any political action, it just needs the UK to rubber stamp it's decisions, and then it all looks respectable. Because really, that's the only difference between Vietnam and Iraq. The UK and the Aussies were there to make it look a bit more respectable.

Conversely, no UN decision that lacks US support has any validity. How many sanctions has the UN imposed against Israel? Will it ever matter?

The US, through its films and other media showcases to the world what the paramount culture of the world should be. No matter how out of kilter the accepted paradigms in US culture might be with the rest of the world, these values are continually propagated across the face of the globe with far more effective force than any other values system can possibly hope to achieve.

In a very real way, through their government and its vast armed forces, the two hundred thousand citizens of the United States of America hold power over the rest of the globe.

Because it matters to us who they choose to lead them, far more than it matters to them who we choose to lead us. The leadership of America, the values it espouses, the culture it promotes, the policy decisions it makes, these affect every human being on the face of the globe.

The voters of America really do have an obligation that they themselves do not understand.
They are the trustees of global values and the trustees of global peace.
In a very real way, our lives and the sort of future the WORLD looks forward to, is in their hands.

And to me, it's all about what's on offer.

I got a little annoyed with those of my countrymen who bombarded the voters of certain Florida counties in the last election telling them to vote for Kerry. I suspect it had the reverse effect.
But also, to be fair, the main issue being competence as far as I can see it, though there are huge things wrong with the Bush Presidency and foreign policy seems to have been made up by people not much better than Ayatollahs themselves and whilst I don''t think Bush was exactly an intellectual giant, he at least seemed to have an element of confidence and know what he was doing. He probably didn't, the last eight years seem to demonstrate that, it was foreign policy dictated by a Christian version of Boy's Own Magazine, but take one look at Gore and Kerry and you can see why Bush won.

America is a big, tough, still relatively new country. If neither of the choices really offer you much change, you choose the guy who seems straight talking. I guess the idea was that Bush wasn't clever enough NOT to be sincere.

But Gore and Kerry? No wonder the Democrats hadn't a hope.

And to be honest, when this campaign started, I figured it would be Rudy Guiliani versus Hilary.
And to my mind, no question. Rudy might apparently belong to the same lot as the neo-cons and the Bible nuts, but he had proved he didn't think like them. If he could get the nomination, then one assumed he'd probably win over the people. But Republican activists it seems, preferred to cut of their noses to spite their faces.

A choice between Rudy and Hilary, it had to be Rudy. Rudy carried the wind of change with him, Hilary...

It's odd, but by choosing a black candidate with a Ghanain surname, the Democrats have played the wildcard that is perhaps the only card that could ensure the Democrats could win. Because whilst the rest of the world judges America on its foreign policy, most Americans are actually unaware that Britain is an island. The Democrats have tended in the past to talk to themselves whilst the Republicans talked to America- more usually White America, Christian America, playing banjos in the Blue Mountains America, but they manage to get their people out. And last time, they made significant advances into both the black and Catholic votes. It seemed the Democrats were being consigned to being the party of the urban coastlines.

But now it's different. America has a choice. For the first time in a long time.

The choice is simple. Allow the tide to continue as it does and let the current mould set, or break it. Change the world.

And that change isn't assured. Voting Obama in doesn't guarantee that, it might all turn out to be a damp squib. But it's the only shot America- and the rest of us- have.



Because to vote in McCain and Palin guarantees business as usual. Foreign policy will carry on as it is, with the US adopting the role the rest of us think should be reserved for the UN as a whole. It will continue to tacitly exploit divisions in its own culture, to promote 'God Bless America, One Nation Under God' as a legitimate values system, it will essentially be a white Anglo-Saxon America in which black people have a place under sufferance because lip service must be paid to Martin Luther King and Hispanics, well, we don't mind them too much, they try so hard don't they, to BE American, as long as they do that we can live with them.

It will be an America where Enron can happen again. An America where lobby groups dictate policy. It is the America of apple pie, shooting trout, The Alamo, TV Evangelists and belief in an axis of evil.
An America that exists on top of inner city racial tensions, giving CIA support to elitist governments in Latin America which float as American puppets to maintain their countries as toothless banana republics suiting the interests of the US consumer.

An America ruled by the clapping of hands in joyful chanting and the frantic writing of cheques.

What Obama offers is something new.
We've been here before.

He could be Lincoln or FDR.
But the again, he could be Kennedy.

What I mean by that, is that the first two really did change America. In ways that hurt, but ultimately were- in most people's eyes I think- good ways. To be sure, we can argue to death about the long term damage the civil war achieved, and it did, its legacy lasted at least a century. A subject for a post in it's own right sometime, maybe.
But Obama offers that sort of choice. As did FDR.

Obama just may break the mould. He's totally counter to what ANYONE thought a US President could be. And not just because he's black.

Because he's real America.

Not apple pie America, real America. The America that doesn't fit the stereotypes. The 'everyone else' America.
And that's good, not just for America, but the world. Because if America can elect Obama, that's the most positive message the world can hear. It can give ALL of us faith in ourselves. We're not that bad. We CAN overthrow prejudice, tribalism, ignorance, if America can stick two fingers up to 'God Bless America', than we can all do the same in our own ways.

Obama is about the here and now, he's about saying 'Sod the past, it's about where we are today. It's about you and me, as people, living in the world we do. What are we going to do about it?'

An Obama presidency could create a new America, just as FDR did. One where TV debates about God pass into history, where America truly becomes the democracy it pretends to be not a mixture between a plutocracy and a theocracy.
Where it truly embraces the values it espouses and becomes a culture based on the values written in its constitution, not those that it seems to think are its values.

Because actually, America has a damn good constitution- it's just that it's spent it's entire history trying to live up to it.



But yes, he could be a Kennedy.
Kennedy, I believe has one man he needs to thank. Lee Harvey Oswald. Had Kennedy served two terms, I have no doubt history would look upon him as a failed President. A man all style and no substance. Contrary to the Oliver Stone starry eyed biopic, the evidence suggests that he would have been far more keen to send troops into Vietnam than Johnson was and far less pro-active with regards to civil rights. Johnson believed wholeheartedly in civil rights, to Kennedy it was just a votewinner. I often think America doesn't realise how lucky it was it got three years of Kennedy and five years of Johnson, rather than a full eight years of Kennedy.

Kennedy is remembered for his soundbytes and his death. He is lucky he isn't remembered as being all talk and no action.

Or worse. He could be remembered as Nixon is.

And that could be the way Obama goes. A lot of fancy soundbytes, but nothing really happens.

It's true.

But I don't think America has anything to lose.

And I think the rest of the world is asking those who act as trustees for the biggest arsenal of nukes in the world; Take that chance. We're all asking you.

Take that chance.

The world will be a better place with Barack Obama being the most powerful man in it, than if Sarah Palin is the most powerful woman in it.

Americans; Please vote for Barack Obama.