America elected her demagogue Tuesday, after a fine rhetorical show before massed crowds, in which the candidate showed great discipline in avoiding substantial commitments, and simply painted the air with exhilarating, meaningless phrases. After successive chameleon changes in political colouration, and the successful moulting of his various radical associations, “O-bama!” ended the campaign posing as a centrist — with a thick wad of reassuringly conventional Democrat policies, and one of the oldest of the old-style politicians as his running mate.
The election was no blowout, and the result showed the same alignments across the U.S. electoral map as in the last several elections, with just a couple points seasonal swing to the left; but still sufficient balance to allow a swing back at the next electoral juncture.
Nor did it vindicate the international media declaration that, “America has moved beyond race.” If you look at the exit polls, the people who said they had voted on the basis of race, or that race was a major factor in their decision, were overwhelmingly voting for Obama. And if you add them up, they correspond approximately to his victory margins, not only nationally but in each swing state. In that sense, one could plausibly argue it was the most racist election in U.S. history. Moreover, it was an election in which 97 per cent of black voters voted for the visibly black candidate. Puh-lease don’t tell me America has moved beyond race.
For two big reasons, I don’t think we can predict anything about Obama’s performance as president. And Canadians should surely be in a position to know why.
There was a television discussion up here, Thursday night, in which certain of our northern sages pondered the question, “Could Canada produce an Obama?”
But Canada has already produced an Obama. His name was Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and we are still paying service costs on the debt he left, while our legal and Parliamentary system is still taking hits from his Charter of so-called Rights and Freedoms. Maybe he wasn’t black, but then, neither is Barack Obama according to his own account of his ancestry. For even on the Kenyan side, he is more Arab than Luo. Trudeau, likewise, was not quite as he appeared, for his mother was Scotch, and his father the rich capitalist owner of a fleet of rather Anglolooking gas stations.
Race means nothing, as people ought to know: it is what is beneath the skin that counts.
Who could have guessed, when we elected our own demagogue back in 1968, that the man with the rose in his teeth would, two years later, be calling the army out in Quebec, and sneering at all the “bleeding hearts” who objected. Could be playing “Adam Smith” to Robert Stanfield’s suggestion of wage and price controls — then imposing them himself once returned to power. Could look like yesterday’s man in 1979, then welcome us to the 1980s with the dismemberment of the Alberta economy, and constitutional innovations to sabotage our heritage of common law.
I am not yet prepared to underestimate Barack Obama. Neither am I prepared to guess where he will go. For all I know, circumstances will conspire to make him another Reagan, and should that unlikelihood come to pass — God willing — I will shower him with praise in 2012.
Events will make or unmake him, just as they did his predecessor. The one thing we thought we could be sure of, when George Bush won the election of 2000, was that here we had a President without foreign policy goals. The world is still there, and so great is my assurance that it will intrude on the U.S. domestic agenda, that perhaps I’ll be surprised and it won’t. But in that case I would be very, very surprised.
As if the election campaign did not take enough time, we are now passing through the 11week interregnum, during which the Obama administration is not yet in place, and the Bush administration has lost what was left of its authority. Will the enemies of the U.S. and of the West (China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Islamist undergrounds, and the more malignant “neutral”) wait for Barack Obama to be officially installed, before testing his mettle? Or have they started acting now, in the shadows?
Obama showed impressive caution and coolness under fire during the campaign. The American people have bet that this translates into a steady and competent Commander-inChief. We should soon see how their bet pays out.
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