14 posts tagged “obama”

Over here in London, I am sensing through various little thoughts that I
overhear, or see on the net, that some people are in denial over the new
Obama presidency. It is a little 'out of left field' for them.

"For how long?" is a common question (as in how long before he is
killed).

And, the lengthier: "The guy played it really well, well done, but
there's a trick up his sleeve."

At a coffeeshop tonight, I overheard the conversation between two men.
One guy was filling the other guy's brain with his grand theory
about what happened: Obama is not really the outsider he is, and the
election, why, it 's all part of a meticulously organised master-plan.

It is fun to observe people adjusting their 'brainwash' programs to take
account of unexpected developments; to 'restore order' after an event
has caused some serious cognitive dissonance. "The USA is a f'cked up
place" just cannot sit with the contradictory implication of the new
developments.

I wonder how I myself am adjusting my brainwash programs. For starters,
I know I am cynical about Obama. Too much so. I cannot get myself to
give him two months of honeymoon. Is the notion that "The Highly
Improbable can Happen and Good Things are Possible" too much for my
brain?

My brain has been busy painting Obama; that career-savvy, smooth-talker
who plotted his rise to power for almost twenty years. My brain takes
his audaciousness in seeking power with a name like his to be indicative
of immense self-absorption. Why sometimes I cannot but think he is a
cynical bastard who will show that nothing has changed at all to all
those unwashed, politically-illiterate masses!

Is the cognitive dissonance of seeing someone inspire, organise, put his
talents to disciplined use, and beat the odds, too too much for my
brain? Why, in my world, people who try to inspire or organise or do
anything audacious fail miserably, this Obama must be a schemer.

Hey, maybe that guy I overheard at the coffeeshop was onto something!

Maybe it was even me! ;-)

Moral of the story: Give Obama a chance.

Mouth-watering revelations from Newsweek, part of their regular "How He Did It" project.

I find this paragraph revealing of Obama's character:

The debates unnerved both candidates. When he was preparing for them during the Democratic primaries, Obama was recorded saying, "I don't consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, 'You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.' So when Brian Williams is asking me about what's a personal thing that you've done [that's green], and I say, you know, 'Well, I planted a bunch of trees.' And he says, 'I'm talking about personal.' What I'm thinking in my head is, 'Well, the truth is, Brian, we can't solve global warming because I f---ing changed light bulbs in my house. It's because of something collective'."

And a good point too!

So how do I feel knowing now that Barack Obama is the new president of
the USA?  Well, excited of course. It says something particularly
important that Barack Hussein Obama, an African-American, married to an
African-American woman with African-American kids is going to be in the
White House. This election will confirm to a lot of people that the USA
is still an exciting leader of the world. It will change attitudes
around the world.

I hopefully also look forward to a competent and intelligent presidency.
I believe he is a uniter, and that should be good for the USA and the rest
of the world.

But ... I see that his margins were actually not that huge in many
states. His popular vote share is only 3-4% ahead of McCain. This was a
closely-contested election despite the appearance of a massive
landslide. He used his slight advantage across many states to accumulate
enough winner-takes-all electoral votes.

I am also reminded that he is part-Caucasian; this played an important
role in securing many white voters. He may have a strange name (for most
US citizens) but he has balanced it well with his autobiographical book
(which helped cement his image of "the typical American story") and his
Christian awakening (the US would not have elected a Muslim BHO).

I do not think he will change things radically foreign-policy-wise. The
US system ensures that the president is "contained" by Congress.

This election is a momentous one for US citizens primarily, not for the
rest of the world so much. It marks the USA's transition into a new era
where race is less of an issue than previously. It particularly marks a
very important transition for the status of Black people in the USA.

Barack Obama is an interesting, unflappable, intelligent guy; but he is
largely untested. He has promised a lot. God only knows how much he will
deliver. By the end of the campaign he was already breaking some of the
Change ideas he started off with (such as accepting private donations).
He has been assisted by a terrible outgoing president, bad economic
circumstances, and an opponent who never felt 'right' (and made a few
mistakes too).

Nevertheless, here is to a hope and a wish that he rises up to the
occasion and produces streams of good, sound decisions that not only
stand his country in good stead, but also the people of the world.

For me, an Obama win (looking very likely now, and a landslide too)
will be very interesting for one main thing: the campaign's
organisation. This is a man who was helped up by a hope-inspiring
speech, and who has been in the Senate for hardly four years, and look
where he is.

Look who he beat: Hillary Clinton. Look who he is leading
comfortably: McCain. Tainted as these personalities are (Hillary by
her husband's time, and McCain by his association with the Bush
administration), imperfect propositions as they were, they are two
formidable politicians who would have filled the president's seat
comfortably (McCain may still do?).

I remember talking to people in London about Obama a year ago, no one
was sure who he was. No one ever thought he'd win. I remember being
at a dinner party with a bunch of young bankers from New York, and
when I mentioned Obama's name, the New Yorkers laughed out loud. "In
America, to be in powerful positions, you have to be a man and you
have to be white. Okay?"

I do not know how he did it. But the word on the internet is that his
campaign has been one of the most organised in history. This David
Axelrod fellow seems to have been on the ball from day one.

This Washington Post article provides some clues on how Obama went
about cultivating friends, picking subjects to focus on since his first days
at the Senate. I am not sure if Obama wanted to be president as soon
as he joined the Senate, but it is clear that he planned for the option,
should he choose it.

When Obama won Iowa, on the back of his vision and personality, he
put the Clinton campaign in disarray. Given the doubts that the
commentators had about Hillary, they wrote her off: if an upstart
like Obama can dislodge her in Iowa so classily, how can she ever
win? She proved them wrong; she bounced back and fought hard. And she
would have won, had it not been for the foresight of the Obama
campaign.

They planned right from the start to have a presence in every state.
Hillary's people thought she'd have the nomination wrapped up early
on, and were lax about their organisation in the smaller, mid-race
states. Come mid-race, with both candidates tied, her campaign was
scrambling to have a presence in 12 states when the Obama people had
been there for months. Those states were crucial in handing Obama his
win over Clinton - she had, after all, won most of the big states.

Few people are aware that one of the reasons for Obama's handsome
surge in the polls is his campaign's spending on TV ads. He regularly
outspends McCain, sometimes with a huge margin. Obama is loaded,
and he burns through the cash super-fast.  Why shouldn't he, he is always
raising new money - see the recent Powell surge.

Howard Dean may have invented internet-based grassroots organisation
but Obama's campaign seems to have made all that look like ancient
history. They raise money at every opportunity. Hillary is
super-tightening the race? We need your support. Palin's just
appeared on the scene? Hey guys, time for your donations.  McCain
is running attack ads? Money please. Powell's just endorsed us?
Greenbacks, please. The campaign's default answer to any situation
is: "Dear supporter, here is how you can help: send us a check."

You cannot win with only money.  He stands for something, and put against
John McCain he is showing he is a better candidate.  His appearances on
Letterman and Leno about two years ago revealed a guy with a sense
of humour, intelligence, and a presidential look. It is now apparent he is also
a highly-focused candidate. I love the way he has matured over the past year;
he used to be a single-issue, Iraq-war guy with a unique name. Now he
speaks with ease on any number of topics and conducts himself with such
terrific judgment.

"Don’t feel defensive. Stay calm, cool and collected."- seems like his motto.

Three days ago I wrote about my "nagging concerns".  I was worried
that you could bash somebody as Muslim and get away with it.  But two
developments have happened.

First, Jon Stewart's mockery of McCain's exclusion of Arabs from
"decent family men".

Second, Colin Powell's highlighting the "so-what if he is a Muslim"
angle in his endorsement of Obama (around 4:00 in the clip). 

It is my hope that these events will start a corrective train of thought
amongst some US citizens.

Updates:

Time magazine blogs on the Powell endorsement.

The Guardian of London writes about the topic too. 

This is the picture Powell was talking about. 

A Muslim McCain organizer banned from talking to CNN.

A touching entry on the same topic.

I do not like that some people find it unacceptable that a US
president can have a middle name like "Hussein". They think Obama is
a closet Arab, or Muslim, and therefore he should be out of contention.

It troubles me that Obama could not have come this far without being
a Christian. Or half-white.

There is another side to the story, but the points above are worth
pondering.

How do my friends in Egypt see the upcoming US election? The answer
may surprise US readers. My friends see it as a choice between two
candidates worse than each other. They have no preference for either
candidate and see both as representatives of the same system; a
system steeped in domineering unfavoured others.

They perceive that Obama has charisma, they know McCain is
experienced. They can see that Palin will hoover up votes from
certain demographics. They know about the US election cycle, and the
huge campaign budgets involved. But they fundamentally believe
neither candidate will make their own lives better. As far as they
are concerned: the US political system produces a stream of
standard-issue presidents.

Let's take the last two Democratic-Party presidents of the US:
Clinton and Carter. Clinton was no great reformer of US foreign
policy. He instigated sanctions against Saddam Hussein's regime,
sanctions that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis; he authorised
illegal attacks on Sudan to pull attention away from his Lewinsky
scandal; and he tried to force Arafat to accept what he deemed a
'good' offer by Ehud Barak. When Arafat walked away, Clinton passed
on a decidedly anti-Arafat message to Bush.

Back in the late 1970s, even though Jimmy Carter was a personal
friend of Anwar Sadat, Carter leaned on Sadat to accept what then
became the Camp David peace accords. The Egyptian negotiating team
had decided unanimously that (Israeli Prime Minister) Begin's offer
was unsatisfactory. But Carter laid it on the line: "Anwar, if you
walk away from this, you walk away from it all, and I will cancel the
US aid program that we have prepared for Egypt".

The eight years of GWB have left people in Egypt (and elsewhere) in
no doubt that he is a particularly bad sample of US president. My
mother curses him whenever he appears on television. She sees him as
responsible for a lot of the bloodshed in Iraq; he lied about WMD and
he should be tried in court for it.

When my mother sees on television Condoleeza Rice, she says to her:
"you, God will punish you." Rice is not the typical US
white-man-in-charge; my mother expected her to come to the job with
an independent mind. Instead, Rice is working from the rule-book that
was set by her predecessors and her president.

The US has got itself in a terrible position: it is right in the
middle of a polarising "war on terror"; it supports a bad regime in
Egypt because the regime accepts instructions from it; and it is
always willing to see things from Israel's point of view. Put
yourself in the place of the common Egyptian: is the US on 'your
side'? Let's see.

The US supports the corrupt, oppressive regime that torments you on a
daily basis, it is "fighting terror" by launching wars against two
Muslim countries and killing lots of Muslims and torturing them, and
it refuses to stop Israel from occupying territories that are not
hers.

People here see the US as a blind supporter of Israel, a country that
in most people's minds is spoilt rotten by the blank cheques it gets
from the US. It is true that Egypt fought Israel as an enemy forty
years ago, but today most Egyptians just want a fair settlement,
something that will please the Palestinians and compensate them for
having lost their country sixty years ago. But the Americans are not
pressuring Israel to make serious concessions.

It is not just the US that is in a terrible position; the Egyptian
people are too. They absolutely resent the way they are being ruled,
but they are struggling to find a way to change the regime. There's
an old joke going around the country. The government raises taxes,
and the people cope. The government mismanages the economy so badly
that people can barely eat, and the people cope. Then the government
institutes a policy of whipping every bridge-crosser, and now finally
protests are organised: "the lines are too long, we need more
whippers".

I believe the Egyptian people need to change their own government by
themselves, I really do not want to see a US president try to "help
out". The best way to help out is to affect what is under the US's
direct control and to not interfere in other people's affairs. What
is under American control is their policies: they can stop giving in
to the short-sighted pro-Israel worldview, they can stop going to war
unnecessarily and fighting Muslims worldwide.

Almost everybody in Egypt thinks the US hates Muslims. Look at it
this way: the US is very worried about China, but it has actually
invested in China over the past twenty years in a manner that brings
puzzlement to many; it is almost like the US wants to help China out.
A lot of US debt today is in the hands of the Chinese government,
China can harm the US economy. But US policy is very careful when
addressing China. Likewise Russia; a lot of care is taken, and no
unnecessary wars or confrontations are sought. North Korea was able
to test a nuclear weapon.

It is only when it comes to the Muslims, be they Iranians, Iraqis,
Afghanis, Lebanese, or Palestinians that force is threatened and
actually deployed. It seems like the US is using these countries as
whipping boys. The US strategy seems to be to pick on the guys they
know they can beat, the guys they know they can play against each
other, the guys with 'development issues', who are still groping
their way out of bad governance. That's a really terrible strategy.

No one I know in Egypt thinks either candidate will change that
strategy.

I watched the McCain-Obama debate in full last night. I watched it on
CNN with my father (in Cairo). About fifteen minutes into it, my dad
thought it'd be a great idea to switch to Al-Jazeera and get the
Arabic-dubbed version. My father is very comfortable with English, so
I was a little surprised, but he is used to watching and listening to
stuff in Arabic. We switched to Al-Jazeera for another fifteen
minutes, and then he called it a night and I switched back to CNN.

The interpreter Al Jazeera assigned to cover Obama was loud and spoke
expressively, whereas the guy who did McCain sounded quiet and
robotic. I was surprised how with Arabic as language of
communication, and the personalities of both candidates now muted, I
could focus much better on what was being said. Context matters, eh?

Returning to CNN was welcome though, because the original version
felt more right for the occasion.

In my opinion, McCain scored heavily in this debate. He came off a
lot more articulate and substantial than I had ever seen him before
(admittedly only a few times). Overall, he seemed authoritative and
made more of the debate than Obama, who I thought was going to be an
expert debater. He engaged robustly and easily brushed off
potentially damaging attacks by Obama.

Obama, on the other hand, appeared more refined and gentlemanly. He
attempted to connect with all parties of the debate: the moderator,
the audience in the room, the TV audience, and McCain himself. McCain
never once even looked in Obama's direction. Towards the end of the
debate, I began to feel that McCain had over-reached a little, he was
coming off as superior and patronising. But he did not get to the
school-master levels of Cheney, when the VP debated against Edwards.

I felt overall McCain won though. Obama did not call McCain on that
overbearing attitude, he did not call him on Iraq or Afghanistan
strongly enough, he left Palin, McCain's age, and a few other things
in the debate unsaid. I also felt that Obama, though a great speaker,
sometimes slowed down a lot - clearly his brain was racing on.
McCain, who started off nervously, became much more fluent quickly.
He seemed to speak from the gut.

Nevertheless, McCain was in his bubble. He thought highly of himself
and little of his opponent. Obama was engaged, on his feet, and
impressively smooth. But he was slow and failed to inflict serious
points against his rival.

Given that most Dems and Reps would have fallen behind party lines,
this was a battle for the independents and 'soft' voters. Unless I am
mis-reading the pulse of the US voter, who may turn out to prefer
refinement and thinks less of experience, McCain won. The good news
is that there are two more debates to really firm up people's minds.

PS. Both drew blanks on the economy.

About an hour ago, shehab forwarded me a youtube vid. I watched it
and instantly was in a great mood.

As I write the McCain gets Barackrolled youtube vid is shooting
through the charts. When I first watched it about an hour ago, it had
4,000 hits. Now it has 61,000. Exponential growth, anyone?

It really hit the spot for us Barack supporters: McCain made a great
move selecting Palin and since then it's become more and more certain
it will be a tough, tough fight. For the first time, I could see McCain
pulling ahead. Now the youtube vid comes and like an aptly-timed joke,
discharges tension, relieves worries, restores confidence: "Yes,
sireee Bob, we have ourselves a winner. Obama can dance, thank God."

What I find most interesting is that in these crucial moments, when
we really needed a vid like that, it was a geezer in Australia (g'day
mate!) who put the clip together.

Is that not a great tribute to Obama? Does more need to be said?!