06-16-2008, 08:22 AM
<b>The worries about Obama</b>
Swapan Dasgupta
Last week, a survey by the US-based Pew Research Centre helpfully confirmed what has been apparent to every newspaper reader and TV viewer for the past few weeks: That, Obama-mania has gripped the world. We have been informed that the citizens of France, Germany, Italy and even China want Barak Obama to be the next President of the US. As for the 20 something scriptwriters for our English-language TV channels, Obama is the best thing that happened since Rafael Nadal.
Tragically, these "enlightened" Europeans and otherwise non-voting Asians can't vote in America's November elections -- <b>unlike India, Americans insist on citizenship as a pre-condition for inclusion in the electoral register</b>. Those who can vote are inclined towards Obama but not by any significant margin.
Ominously, the polls in Missouri, a State that has an uncanny knack of picking the ultimate winner, Republican candidate John McCain enjoys a narrow lead over Obama. Political buffs insist that Obama's initial advantage is only to be expected after the wave of publicity surrounding his victory in the Democratic primaries over Hillary Clinton. They point out that Michael Dukakis enjoyed a 17-point lead over George Bush (Sr) at the time of the party conventions in 1988. Bush, needless to say, won the presidential election in November convincingly.
Of course, history is under no obligation to repeat itself and it is entirely possible that a combination of youth, euphoria and money will defeat McCain. There is a novelty about Obama that makes him instinctively more appealing than his rival. McCain, a Vietnam War hero with a glorious record of public service and independent thinking, is precisely the type of venerable politician that accord dignity to Capitol Hill.
Unfortunately for him, American presidents since Jimmy Carter have never been elected on account of their stodginess -- the senior Bush was an exception but he won on the reflected glory of Ronald Reagan. <b>In the past three decades, American voters have been swayed by quirkiness and flamboyance</b>. President George W Bush was more interesting and appealing than his rivals Al Gore and John Kerry; Jimmy Carter was more quirky than Gerald Ford; and in the charisma count Bill Clinton was unsurpassable.
<b>In a race where showmanship matters more than substance, Obama has a head-start. His ethnicity endears him to guilt-ridden White liberals who also fear that opposing him could invite charges of racial bias -- exactly the same phenomenon that explains the Indian liberal's remarkable inclination to overlook Mayawati's excesses.</b> His social elitism, as reflected in his Pennsylvania speech explaining the boredom and bitterness of the White left-outs, touches a chord with the better educated who is satisfied that he is one of us. His tax-and-spend economics and talk-to-the-terrorists foreign policy appeals to campus radicals -- a subset that believes clobbering evil multinationals and bloodthirsty Israelis will bring equity and peace to the world. Finally, his poetic oratory endears him to those who see profundity in theatrics from the pulpit. Hillary Clinton mocked a platform built on empty "words". But isn't imagery what political communication is all about?
The real question, we have been told by a high priest of liberalism in New York Times, is not "how will Obama change America?" but "how much has America changed?" to make Obama a very serious contender for the White House. It's a fair observation. A columnist in the Wall Street Journal has posited the contest as a fight between Old America and New America: "In the Old America, love of country was natural. You breathed it in. You either loved it or knew you should. In the New America, love of country is a decision. It's one you make after weighing the pros and cons. What you breathe in is scepticism and a heightened appreciation of the global view."
If the "global view" is confined to appreciating the virtues of the Kyoto Protocol and acknowledging the need to temper farm subsidies to more realistic levels, India has little to worry about a possible Obama Administration. Neither does Obama's apparent partiality for overdoses of welfare and punitive taxation of windfall profits really cast its shadow on India -- in fact, India can take advantage of the further erosion of US competitiveness. Nor should we be unduly concerned at the possible Europeanisation of the US -- dilution of aggressive nationalism in favour of multilateral talking shops. Even McCain seems inclined towards reversing President Bush's unilateral excesses.
What should be of concern to India is the possible dilution of the "imperial" dimensions of US foreign policy. In concrete terms, this boils down to Obama's approach to the war on terror. Obama's core constituency, the one that secured him the Democratic nomination, has reacted to Bush's gung-ho crusade against Islamist "evil" by swinging in the opposite direction. <b>Obama wants to cut American losses in Iraq and bring the boys home. If he does that and leaves Iraq to God and anarchy, it will be interpreted as an unqualified victory by those who have crazy notions of Sharia rule and a global Caliphate</b>. <b>Far from diluting the anger against America, a shamefaced retreat from Iraq will galvanise the soldiers of God to redouble their efforts in Egypt, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The fear of America has bred anger but it has also kept ideologically-driven terrorists on the backfoot. An America preoccupied with itself will create openings for terrorists in both West and South Asia</b>. India has been a target of global terror not because we are an American vassal -- which we are not -- but because of what we are -- a non-denominational democracy. America's retreat will give the forces of terror an additional opening in India and its neighbourhood.
<b>For purely selfish reasons, India has compelling reasons to hope that Obama doesn't win in November.</b>
Swapan Dasgupta
Last week, a survey by the US-based Pew Research Centre helpfully confirmed what has been apparent to every newspaper reader and TV viewer for the past few weeks: That, Obama-mania has gripped the world. We have been informed that the citizens of France, Germany, Italy and even China want Barak Obama to be the next President of the US. As for the 20 something scriptwriters for our English-language TV channels, Obama is the best thing that happened since Rafael Nadal.
Tragically, these "enlightened" Europeans and otherwise non-voting Asians can't vote in America's November elections -- <b>unlike India, Americans insist on citizenship as a pre-condition for inclusion in the electoral register</b>. Those who can vote are inclined towards Obama but not by any significant margin.
Ominously, the polls in Missouri, a State that has an uncanny knack of picking the ultimate winner, Republican candidate John McCain enjoys a narrow lead over Obama. Political buffs insist that Obama's initial advantage is only to be expected after the wave of publicity surrounding his victory in the Democratic primaries over Hillary Clinton. They point out that Michael Dukakis enjoyed a 17-point lead over George Bush (Sr) at the time of the party conventions in 1988. Bush, needless to say, won the presidential election in November convincingly.
Of course, history is under no obligation to repeat itself and it is entirely possible that a combination of youth, euphoria and money will defeat McCain. There is a novelty about Obama that makes him instinctively more appealing than his rival. McCain, a Vietnam War hero with a glorious record of public service and independent thinking, is precisely the type of venerable politician that accord dignity to Capitol Hill.
Unfortunately for him, American presidents since Jimmy Carter have never been elected on account of their stodginess -- the senior Bush was an exception but he won on the reflected glory of Ronald Reagan. <b>In the past three decades, American voters have been swayed by quirkiness and flamboyance</b>. President George W Bush was more interesting and appealing than his rivals Al Gore and John Kerry; Jimmy Carter was more quirky than Gerald Ford; and in the charisma count Bill Clinton was unsurpassable.
<b>In a race where showmanship matters more than substance, Obama has a head-start. His ethnicity endears him to guilt-ridden White liberals who also fear that opposing him could invite charges of racial bias -- exactly the same phenomenon that explains the Indian liberal's remarkable inclination to overlook Mayawati's excesses.</b> His social elitism, as reflected in his Pennsylvania speech explaining the boredom and bitterness of the White left-outs, touches a chord with the better educated who is satisfied that he is one of us. His tax-and-spend economics and talk-to-the-terrorists foreign policy appeals to campus radicals -- a subset that believes clobbering evil multinationals and bloodthirsty Israelis will bring equity and peace to the world. Finally, his poetic oratory endears him to those who see profundity in theatrics from the pulpit. Hillary Clinton mocked a platform built on empty "words". But isn't imagery what political communication is all about?
The real question, we have been told by a high priest of liberalism in New York Times, is not "how will Obama change America?" but "how much has America changed?" to make Obama a very serious contender for the White House. It's a fair observation. A columnist in the Wall Street Journal has posited the contest as a fight between Old America and New America: "In the Old America, love of country was natural. You breathed it in. You either loved it or knew you should. In the New America, love of country is a decision. It's one you make after weighing the pros and cons. What you breathe in is scepticism and a heightened appreciation of the global view."
If the "global view" is confined to appreciating the virtues of the Kyoto Protocol and acknowledging the need to temper farm subsidies to more realistic levels, India has little to worry about a possible Obama Administration. Neither does Obama's apparent partiality for overdoses of welfare and punitive taxation of windfall profits really cast its shadow on India -- in fact, India can take advantage of the further erosion of US competitiveness. Nor should we be unduly concerned at the possible Europeanisation of the US -- dilution of aggressive nationalism in favour of multilateral talking shops. Even McCain seems inclined towards reversing President Bush's unilateral excesses.
What should be of concern to India is the possible dilution of the "imperial" dimensions of US foreign policy. In concrete terms, this boils down to Obama's approach to the war on terror. Obama's core constituency, the one that secured him the Democratic nomination, has reacted to Bush's gung-ho crusade against Islamist "evil" by swinging in the opposite direction. <b>Obama wants to cut American losses in Iraq and bring the boys home. If he does that and leaves Iraq to God and anarchy, it will be interpreted as an unqualified victory by those who have crazy notions of Sharia rule and a global Caliphate</b>. <b>Far from diluting the anger against America, a shamefaced retreat from Iraq will galvanise the soldiers of God to redouble their efforts in Egypt, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The fear of America has bred anger but it has also kept ideologically-driven terrorists on the backfoot. An America preoccupied with itself will create openings for terrorists in both West and South Asia</b>. India has been a target of global terror not because we are an American vassal -- which we are not -- but because of what we are -- a non-denominational democracy. America's retreat will give the forces of terror an additional opening in India and its neighbourhood.
<b>For purely selfish reasons, India has compelling reasons to hope that Obama doesn't win in November.</b>