As the coolest cat goes home
President Barack Obama’s era in the United States of America spent its allotted time last week and yielded its place to another. The curtain came down on it on January 20. And the world’s most powerful black man ever began his long trek towards the sunset as a private US citizen – with a difference. […]
President Barack Obama’s era in the United States of America spent its allotted time last week and yielded its place to another. The curtain came down on it on January 20. And the world’s most powerful black man ever began his long trek towards the sunset as a private US citizen – with a difference.
Whatever will be the judgement of history on his eight years in the White House, no one could dispute that Barack Obama was a unique phenomenon in American political history. For eight years, we more or less felt his presence as the world’s most powerful man like a sweet dream from which the world would one day wake up and face the reality of, to borrow a local phrase, political abracadabra. It did not happen that way. The man was for real; his election victories in 2008 and 2012 were for real.
Obama notched a string of firsts in American political history. For the purpose of this narrative, we settle for just one. He was, to put a fine point to it, the first African-American president of God’s Own Country that quite frankly, often behaves, well, like Not God’s Own Country. There is nothing ordinary about his shattering the glass ceiling. The historical weight of what he did is heavy; its political weight is extraordinary. He reduced the pernicious myth that the black man in America was historically and racially destined to be ruled, not to rule to what we now know it is, a myth standing on spindly legs.
No one was more aware of his unlikelihood of his becoming the president of the United States than Obama himself. At the 2004 Democratic National Convention on July 27 that year, at which he delivered the keynote address that set him on the path to the presidency four years later, Obama underlined this fact. In his opening speech, the future president of the United States said: “…let us face it, my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely.”
Yep, the choice of this relatively unknown black man for that important political function had elements of shock and surprise. He must have said himself, not once and not twice, why me? Was this the much-cherished, if fabled, American dream? In Nigeria we would simply put it down to mighty miracle of Jesus for which God must be praised. It was the one speech that showed the world what stuff he was made of: his oratory and his potential for leadership. The talent scouts for American leadership marked Obama down as a potential future commander-in-chief.
No one looked at the colour of his skin. What mattered to them, as the late Martin Luther King Jr would put it, were the content of his brain and the content of his mind. From that moment, Obama began his steady climb up the presidential totem pole. He was the long distance runner. He was sometimes assailed by personal doubts, wondering, it would seem, if he was trying to dance Ajasco where the angels feared to tread. His stunning electoral victories never quite melted that little iceberg of doubt until the very end of his administration.
I sometimes wondered if Obama thought he was perhaps a fluke in the American political system. In his victory speech at Grant Park, Illinois, after he won his first term election on November 4, 2008, Obama returned to the theme of his unlikely candidature. He said: “I was never the likeliest candidate for this office.”
Sure. In the primaries for the Democratic nomination, he faced a formidable white woman, Mrs Hilary Clinton. It did not seem likely that he would defeat a white woman who appeared to be the likely choice of the establishment. He beat her. In the election itself, he faced Senator John McCain, a war hero, from the Republican Party. He, a white man and a war hero, seemed more likely than the rookie senator from Illinois, to get the trophy. But again, the unlikely candidate turned out to be the likely candidate.
In his famous race speech in Philadelphia, March 18, 2008, Obama reminded his fellow Americans: “I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas.” The unlikely theme again.
Well, the rest is now history. He proved in 2012 that his 2008 victory was not a fluke. In his eight years in the White House, he proved that he was not an aberration in the American political system.
It would be both naïve and unrealistic to expect a string of black men to replicate the Obama phenomenon. Maybe, we may not see another black man in the Oval Office tomorrow, but Obama proved that the constitutional right of the black man to occupy that office belongs to those who have the audacity to dare. No one would offer it to the black man on a platter of gold for no better reason than the colour of his skin. No, it is still the American way. Prove yourself and have the courage to follow your heart.
The Obama era has receded into the dark womb of history. But what he stood for and what he did with the power and his rare opportunity would be the means by which pundits and history would ultimately judge him. Would history be kind to him? If he were Churchill, it would because he would write it.
It is too early to properly judge him. In the peculiar nature of political leadership, some of his unwise decisions might turn out to be wise in the light to current political circumstances. The judgement of history would decide Obama’s ultimate place in the pantheon of his country’s leaders, some of whom were truly great.
However, I think it must haunt the former president that he did not achieve one of his greatest ambitions. He went into the Oval Office determined to keep his country from fighting direct or proxy wars. He did not realise that ambition. Instead, he had to confront the realities of bad global behaviour that gives rise to wars that suck in countries like the United States.
We can give Obama this. He was the coolest cat ever to occupy the Great White House. He was so cool and unflappable that some of his aides sometimes despaired of a man who never gave in to anger or visible frustrations. He did not play dirty politics. He did not indulge in dirty political tricks. He was the nearest to a saint in politics.
As one era ended, another began. This is now the President Donald Trump era. We don’t know yet what it holds for the Americans and the world. Still, we welcome it with some hope for global peace and a more just world and an economic system that puts the fishing rods in the hands of the poor. But given the bellicose posture of the new president, the world trembles. Will he use the enormous military and economic power at his command to offer the world humane and responsible leadership, or would he be both the world’s policeman as well as its warrior president?
I think it calls for prayers.