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TechnoratiWill this man heal all wounds?
Anyone who thinks that this election has divided America as never before needs to dust off his history books.
A recent BBC poll indicates enormous enthusiasm for Barack Obama outside the United States. In 22 countries from Italy to Egypt he leads John McCain by about four to one on average, margins not seen since the last time a Democrat faced a Republican in an American election. It's one more warning to Mr. Obama's domestic supporters that he's not quite the phenomenon they think he is.
This foreign enthusiasm is puzzling. Recent liberal Democratic presidents have performed fairly poorly on security and trade, and if Mr. Obama had consistent positions they might well be protectionist. Meanwhile to many of his American supporters his appeal is less programmatic than spiritual; he will heal America of divisions that allegedly run as deep as any the republic has ever known. Why this prospect would appeal in, say, Singapore or France is not obvious, especially to people who don't like America very much. But in any case it is untenable because based on a false premise.
Barack Obama may be a healer, and the inauguration of a black president would certainly be good for America. The problem is simply that the premise that America is divided as never before does not withstand informed scrutiny. Not on race, not on foreign affairs, not on economics, not on anything.
Compare today with 1800, when the election of Thomas Jefferson prompted a leading member of George Washington's Federalist party, Fisher Ames, to expect "the loathsome steam of human victims offered in sacrifice." The Jeffersonian Republicans in return accused the Federalists of being closet monarchists possibly plotting to hand the U.S. back to Britain, and in 1814 the remnants of the Federalist party did make a politically lethal though otherwise feeble effort to take New England out of the Union. But after a short-lived "Era of Good Feelings," by 1832 president Andrew Jackson was threatening to hang his own former Vice President, John C. Calhoun, over tariff policy linked to states' rights and slavery.
Speaking of slavery, in 1856 Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner was savagely beaten on the floor of the Senate by South Carolina congressman Preston Brooks, to general Southern approval, in the lead-up to a civil war that would kill over 600,000 Americans, nearly as many as all America's other wars combined. And the man who saved the Union, President Lincoln, was himself subjected to extraordinary abuse in his day, including unflattering comparison to a baboon by a member of his own cabinet.
The Civil War was obviously the nadir. But how do today's divisions compare with Senator "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman's campaign promise to stab president Grover Cleveland, a fellow Democrat, over bank policy? From a resurgent Klan in the 1920s to Republicans washing their children's mouths out with soap in the 1930s for saying "Roosevelt" to McCarthy-era accusations of treason in high places to "Hey Hey LBJ, How Many Kids Did You Kill Today?" and "Burn Baby Burn", persistent urban rumours that Nixon would put blacks in concentration camps and ridicule of Ronald Reagan as a senile warmonger, American politics is consistently rambunctious, with a dash of venomous paranoia at least as evident on the left as the right. Even the relatively placid Clinton era saw the president impeached as a wretched cad then acquitted on a bitter partisan vote.
I happen to think the United States has had surprisingly good government under this system, in part because issues get very thoroughly aired. And (speaking for the record as a hard-core conservative) I consider 2008 a fairly unimportant election in which a cranky mediocrity and a charming novice seek to replace a disappointing incumbent.
I can't muster any views more apocalyptic than that. Except that, based on the historical record, enthusiasts for Barack Obama consumed with hatred of George W. Bush are in part imagining and in part creating the very abyss of partisan loathing they claim their man can fix with a few ritual phrases and a laying-on of hands. As for foreigners, they don't get to vote and Americans mostly don't care what they think. Rightly not, judging by that BBC poll.
John Robson has a PhD in American History and is an Invited Professor at the University of Ottawa. He is a regular columnist for The Ottawa Citizen.
Dr. Robinson, thanks for the historical perspective. That is something we have generally lost in America. Everything is a crisis these days and many act as if our forefathers never had the challenges we face today.
We are often driven by the leading and very cowardly elite class of journalists, politicians and do-nothings (read “pundits")who keep telling us how bad things are and only getting worse.
Tough times yes, but it seems that our ancestors made it through WWI, WWII, the Cold War, the Depression, and, oh yes, the Civil War. Did I forget to mention the founding of a new nation and the forging of a very difficult-to-draft Constitution?
That being said, I beg to disagree that Sen McCain is “cranky mediocrity”. Of the two candidates, he is the most likely to be great and may give us the boldness we need; if for no other reason than to shake us up and restore a bit of courage and attitude to we Americans who are becoming a bunch of hand-wringers. Mr Obama is a bright fellow who appears to follow the tide rather than have the courage to take the lead. Nothing against European culture, but his style fits more into that model; not a good fit for an America that needs to be reinvigorated and find its historical courage once again.
R, Dan
“I consider 2008 a fairly unimportant election”
Dr Robson, are you aware that the three of the Supreme Court justices are well beyond retirement age? That if even one retires while the Democrats control Congress and the White House, he or she will be replaced by an equally radically liberal justice?
This will bury for a generation our hope of overturning Roe v Wade. Did you know that 50 million Americans have lost their lives to abortion since 1973 Roe v Wade decision? This is the modern equivalent of the Dred Scott decision in which an African American was decreed property and not a person. It took the Civil War to resolve that issue.
Did you know that the highest abortion rates are among African Americans, which is no accident since most abortion mills are located in minority neighborhoods?
Did you know that Margaret Sanger the foundress of Planned Parenthood was a racist eugenicist who made no secret of her agenda to rid America of minorities and immigrants?
Barack Obama is the most pro-abortion candidate in the history of the American presidential elections, four times he opposed the “Born Alive Infant Protection Act” which allows infants born during induced abortions to receive medical care. No other senator voted against this bill.
This IS a crucial election. I want our first African American president to be Alan Keyes, a fine intellect and devout Catholic. He would bring honor to his faith, our nation and to his race.
Fr Bill says: “We are on earth at this time to make it a better place”. I would rather put it this way: we are here on earth to make ourselves better persons and, to the extend we succeed, we makes our world a better place.
If some good-natured white people who later became my friends could wonder at how I began to read habitually, recreationally (as opposed to curricularly), wonder at how I was able to read War and Peace - a rather easy book to read if you can find the time - when I was only sixteen, then it is understandable why Obama is constantly being accused of ‘intellectualism’ and ‘elitism’ when he is no more elitist and no more conventionally educated than the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton.
Contemporary - not historical - force majeure may yet nudge Obama into the seat of the American presidency, and only when this happens that I, as a black man, may begin to believe that the elderly white woman who crossed to the other side of road to avoid walking past me on the pavement may yet invite me into her house for tea. After all there is no way Obama can win without those who still think, even now, that they can never vote for a black person changing their minds.
And can Mercatornet find someone who may at least write something ever so slightly constructive about Obama?
Dr John Robson wants to come across as nonpartisan and candid in this article, but the upshot is pretty tendentious. One thing that stands out is his simmering dislike of Obama. He fails in his effort to be subtle – this piece is grossly cynical, condescending and snide, all at Obama’s expense. All right he dismisses McCain and Obama as a ‘cranky mediocrity’ and a ‘charming novice’ respectively, but this does not detract from what appears to be his before-the-fact aversion to an Obama presidency. No one is saying Obama is going to transfigure into a messiah if/when he wins the election. He is human and he is going to remain human, do the best he can according his lights – it is simply not fair to pre-guess him. After all, novice or not, Obama is far less uninformed and clueless than G.W Bush.
As a black man (African), I have always tried to avoid using race as a weapon (or non-weapon) - either as a shield or spear – but on a deeper level one wonders whether those who spurn Obama are doing that not so much because they think he may fail as a president, as that he may just as well turn out to be one of the greats, more so as he will come after the most feckless president in American history. Would this not further explode the myth of the black person being in cahoots with failure, with entropy? It all boils down to that ancient thing: suspicion of the black person. Which is why a good few of those who say they will vote for Obama will not. I think they call this the ‘Bradley Effect’ in the US. It is something deeply rooted in the unconscious, although I wouldn’t go so far as to say the ‘collective unconscious.’
The media has us almost believing that we, who are still walking about, are all that is, was or ever will be. That is probably why History is seldom taught anymore. We are on earth at this time to make it a better place ... but we are temporary and are not given any greater task than the people who have gon before us. This article makes it clear.
Your a racist. Obama is the best thing that has happened to america since martin luther king jr. One day maybe u can learn to see that the world does not revolve around the colour of someones skin or even there age. Mcain is like 80 btw if u are so worried about obamas age
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