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That Presidential candidate Barack Obama is charismatic, good looking, and an articulate speaker is a given; that his candidacy is tearing the scabs off racial wounds in the United States is another. But equally, if not more important is the way the rest of the world views the junior senator from Illinois and the possibilities of an Obama presidency. While liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans throw insults back and forth across the internet like a bunch of spoiled brats who are incapable of playing nice in the sandbox, here and in the rest of the world, many are looking forward to a breath of fresh air and a different tune coming out of the White House come January.
After years of retreating from international discourse and diplomacy, and going it alone where fools would not tread, the possibility of “change”, that is a regime change in the US, has fired up the world's interest in the American presidential race to an all time high. The India Times, notes that:
...Obama has, ever since he announced his canditdature, been hailed as not only America's but the whole world's great black hope for evolutionary change. That the word's most powerful democracy can elect – or even seek to elect - a black man to its highest public office, is seen as a waterhed breakthrough for progress ive ideas and ideals not just for the US but for the international community in its entirety, wounded as it is by entrenched antagonisms. (Times of India, 9-1-08)
The article makes an interesting comparison between the reaction of the Indian middle class to the Obama candidacy and the candidacy of a dalit (Untouchable) woman in their very own back yard. The article goes on to say:
Liberal and progressive India's adulation of Obama is in sharp contrast to the scorn and suspicion it contines to reserve for Mayawati. Forbes might salute the Dalit leader for having overcome millennea-old caste and gender barriers to become the chief minister of what is considsered to be the mot politically significant state in the world's most pouulous democracy uppper crust India, Mayawati remains, at best, an object of satire and ridicule, and, at worst, a disaster waiting to happen as a would-be prime minister. (Ibid)
Indian and American politics have a lot in common in this regard. Both are dealing with the encumbrances of generations of discrimination against oppressed ethnic, economic and cultural minorities, as those same oppressed populations are now rising to positions of power within a culture that has historically kept them oppressed and powerless. In India, the caste system has restricted the upward mobility of lower castes for generations and continues to do so, despite the very real possibility that a lower caste (Dalit) woman may well become the nation's next Prime Minister.
In the United States, the idea that a person of color, a black man with a white mother and a Kenyan father, not only dares to run for President, but has a very good chance of taking that office, frightens a lot of people, so much so, that they will run for the nearest white candidate, no matter how flawed he might be. A partisan website, http://www.democrats.com/john-mccain-married-to-the-mob, chronicles what it claims are unsavory dealings in politics, business and journalism when it comes to reporting details of the history of Mrs. McCain’s beer distributorship.
While the right claims there is a “liberal media”, the left says not only is the media in the US not “liberal”, but most of it is corporate-owned and refuses to report on situations which will make its owners or their backers uncomfortable or angry. Ultimately, the question is whether the American media will subject Senator John McCain to the same Hubble microscope proctology exam that they have been giving Senator Obama for more than a year.
As always, only time will tell.
