Obama and the American Presidency

IN his piece titled "The Barack Obama Phenomenon", (The Guardian, Crossroads, February 10, 2008), Dr. Reuben Abati has done a very wonderful analysis of American politics and posits that at the end the "Obama phenomenon" would fizzle as Americans fully realise what they are about to do. That they are about to crown a black man the head chief of the world.

What Abati is writing represents the thinking of many other Blacks I have seen or read. It explains why the Blacks have been very slow in embracing his candidacy and why even in this late stage most of the former Black Leaders, Jesse Jackson, and Andrew Young among others have not endorsed him. It also supports the idea why the super delegates are drawn much more to Mrs. Clinton than to Mr. Obama. The Super Delegates are the party elders who in the past crowned the nominee in the infamous "smoke filled rooms."

Abati's analysis further recognises the gut feelings of Republicans, who have for the most part given Obama's campaign more leeway than they have given Mrs. Clinton. Even the "first Black President" Mr. Clinton has attempted to play into the thought that Americans when the rubber meets the road would not hand over the Commander in Chief position to a Black Man. The Hispanic voters are not that impressed by Obama in spite of the fact that he is a minority like they are and in fact looks more like them than he looks like a Black Man. Finally the true King Makers in U.S., the Jews have not embraced publicly the "Obama Phenomenon." Given all these elements, one would be (and many have) inclined to see this Obama thing from Abati's view point. But I must disappoint. I fail to see this thing this way. Why?

For starters Obama does not fit into a Black Man's features. True his father was a Kenyan visitor to America and Obama therefore

can be described as a Kenyan just as I insist that my children (sometimes against their wishes) are Nigerians, but other than by that anachronistic one-sixteenth blood rule Obama is not a Black

Man. He does not look like one, has not lived like one, and was not raised like one. The older Mr. Obama's contact with the younger does not total the equivalent of two full years. The politician was raised by his mother and his mother's family alone. His education at Columbia and Harvard University is not the same as Howard or St. Augustine. So by the breed or blood (nature or nurture) argument,

Obama is 100 per cent breed and only 50 per cent blood. If this were ordinary math Obama would be 75 per cent white and only 25 per cent black.

Secondly there is a "tide in the affairs of men which when seized" is working in Obama's favour. America is ready for a phenomenal change. It is a change that would have to come from non-traditional source. Mr. Clinton's Presidency was of such magnitude as was Mr. Carter's. These Southern presidents came at a time when a new generation of Americans got tired of the status quo with all the established norms of Western and North Eastern American leadership. They looked elsewhere for leadership. But the closest to this need for a new direction was last experienced in 1960 when the impossible happened: When White Protestant Anglo Saxon Americans turned to an Irish Catholic for guidance.

A re-reading of the newspapers of those days sounded as if they were writing about Obama. No pundit believed that John Fitzgerald Kennedy a young inexperienced Massachusetts Senator beholden to the Italian Mafia would win the presidency of the United States. But he did. Whenever United States needs a new direction U.S. unlike most other countries would experiment with something new. That is how the country has developed and grown. Obama is the 21st century example of this uniquely American phenomenon.

Obama is another in the long list of Blacks going into forbidden fields and electrifying it. Remember a fat (almost ugly black woman

who seized the airwaves in the 80s) and has kept it since. Her name is Oprah Winfrey. Nobody believed that white American women will sit down and listen to the wisdom peddled by a black woman. Well the Abatis of that era are now true believers. Remember that golf was one clearly white sport. Most people ignored this sport until Mr. Tiger Woods stepped in and changed it forever. Golf has now tripled its following among world fans. Thanks to Mr. Woods. Obama is doing the same thing for politics. The young people who left politics to their elders have now been engaged. We no longer hear of political apathy. Election organisers now worry about having enough ballot papers for voting not about sleepy voting places.

Will Obama go all the way? My answer is he could unless he self-destructs. If he forgets Michelle, his wife and starts thinking or looking for other beautiful women on his path or is carried away by his rock star status and takes his eyes off the prize, he will not get there. But so long as he understands the mission as he seems now, the prize is his to throw away.

Aduba lives in Boston, Massachusetts, United States