Obama again

A true believer in American ideals | The Australian

Barack Obama's inauguration speech was a powerful statement of the universal power of democracy

PRESIDENT Barack Obama spoke to the world yesterday. Certainly, his inaugural address drew on the idealistic assumption of Americans, easily mistaken for arrogance, that they can create a more perfect union. Certainly, he invoked examples from his country's history. Certainly, he spoke in a style shaped by the great tradition of religious oratory practised by black preachers since slave times. But this uniquely American speech by a uniquely American leader addressed universal issues and offered examples that will resonate around the world. For everybody who believes democracy is the sole system of government that both protects and empowers ordinary people, Mr Obama's presence on the steps of the Capitol in Washington was living proof that in a just society ability should know no bounds. In standing there, he showed the world that the moral wealth and social strength of his society is marked by the irrelevance of religion, race and class in defining an individual's destiny. The President did not talk in his speech at length about being black, just as he never made an issue of his mixed ancestry through the campaign. But there is no ignoring the symbolism of his election. From where Mr Obama stood on the steps of the Capitol, the ridge where the home of Confederate commander Robert E. Lee still stands is in view. So is the memorial to Abraham Lincoln, the president whose armies beat Lee. The election of a man married to a descendant of slaves defines the triumph of democracy and the rule of law over all who believe that some men and women are born more equal than others. As Mr Obama put it, "A man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath". There is no denying the American underclass is disproportionately black. But the President's election confronts those in Europe and Great Britain, and here at home, who refuse to believe that in the way the US has delivered on its promise of a better life for hundreds of millions of migrants since the 17th century it is a morally sound society. The American people have made a black man, the son of an immigrant, President. There is no sign of the equivalent occurring for any citizen of Moroccan background in France, or of a Pakistani becoming prime minister in Great Britain. Or, for that matter, of an indigenous Australian living in The Lodge.

While Mr Obama invoked George Washington, who at the lowest point of the War of Independence elected to attack, the shade of Lincoln permeated the inaugural address. Like Lincoln, the new President takes office in hard times. There is no doubting the US today is immeasurably richer than in 1861 when Lincoln swore the oath of office and, above all, it is united, which it was not then. But now, as then, the incoming President faces challenges that are not easily answered. Lincoln never denied the depth of the crisis confronting his America and neither does Mr Obama. "Homes have been lost, jobs shed, businesses shuttered. Our healthcare is too costly, our schools fail too many, and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet," he said. However, Mr Obama did not allow himself the luxury of taking cover from reality in rhetoric. The obvious argument in his inaugural address would have been to blame the banks for creating an economic crisis that threatens millions of people with penury and to promise a new way of doing business. But Mr Obama understands that while Wall Street may have got the US into this mess, the market economy can get it out - but only if it operates in the interest of all Americans. Mr Obama also emulated Lincoln yesterday in signalling his independence of ideology. Where Lincoln was up for any idea that would save the Union, so Mr Obama announced the end of the old way in politics, "of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions - that time has surely passed". It is the mark of the man that he said such a thing. The founding fathers designed the American political system so that no president could easily impose his will on Congress and while it is easy to promise tough decisions, it is much harder to enact them. The minute the Obama administration announces it wants to close unproductive army bases they will have a fight on their hands with powerful representatives from the affected states, politicians with the legislative power to less stall than stop the administration's program. The minute the President details plans to reduce the cost of healthcare he will confront the doctors' lobby and health insurance industry, forces that no president in modern times has defeated, or even defied. And when Mr Obama decided to speak of unpleasant decisions that could not be put off, social security could not have been far from his mind. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that under existing arrangements the cost of supporting America's ever increasing army of the elderly will create a public debt of 400per cent of GDP by mid-century. According to any conventional reading of US politics, a first-term president who puts pure policy above politics in proposing welfare reform will be lucky to serve a second. But Mr Obama obviously believes the voters can deal with hard facts. While he pointed to interventionist programs, rejecting those who suggest "our system cannot tolerate too many big ideas", he made it plain that he was only interested in public programs whose success can be measured. And the President also made it plain that, from Wall Street bankers to welfare recipients, the American people had to take responsibility for themselves, challenging those in his original Chicago base who believe that society, not parents are responsible for dysfunctional families. "What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly". The easy "yes we can" optimism of the campaign was replaced with a warning that while the US will emerge from the crisis, it requires Americans "giving our all to a difficult task".

Mr Obama was equally clear in his message to the wider world. He acknowledged that in the war of ideas military might is never enough, rather "power grows through its prudent use" and he reached out to the Muslim world, alluding to Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib in saying he rejected as false "the choice between our safety and our ideals". Opponents of America's two wars will also look for comfort in his promise to "responsibly" leave Iraq and his ambiguous undertaking "to forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan". They shouldn't, because like George W. Bush, Mr Obama is an American idealist, believing that what makes the US a power in the world is its system of government - and the example to the world that American democracy offers is what Osama bin Laden and his evil ilk hate and fear above all else. Mr Obama's message to those who believe the US lacks the stomach for the fight against terrorism or that his administration will appease its enemies could have come from his predecessor: "We will not apologise for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defence, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you, 'know that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us and we will defeat you'."

A bare three weeks separates the bicentenary of Lincoln's birth from Barack Obama's inauguration, who, like Lincoln, is also from Illinois. But while the pair both survived the tough world of the state's machine politics, in almost every other way they inhabit immeasurably different worlds. But they responded to the crisis of their age with the same courage, not resiling from the burden of leadership few expected them to win 12 months before their election. Mr Obama's inaugural address was a speech that only an individual with an implacable belief in American democracy and its capacity to overcome its own errors could have delivered. Mr Obama is burdened with expectations unequalled by those imposed on any US leader since Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 20th century, Lincoln in the 19th and, in the 18th, the country's first president, Washington. With no administrative record to speak of, no one knows whether Mr Obama will be able to implement his very American ideals into an American reality. But in the way he sought to enlist his countrymen and women into the tasks he set, he showed the courage of a true leader. Last November, tens of millions of Americans expressed their confidence in Barack Obama. Yesterday, he expressed his belief in them.