Changing Politics for Good?
Barack Obama could well become the next President of the United States and, as far as much of the world's ordinary citizens are concerned, that is much better news than the alternative. Indeed, apart from Mandela, no politician over the last ten years has caught the imagination of people beyond his own country more than Barack Obama, and no politician in the top 21 economies has managed to re-invigorate an interest in politics in his own nation in the way Obama has.
Nevertheless, Obamamania has caused hundreds of thousands of previously disengaged Americans to register to vote in the Democrat leadership race. Similarly, though McCain's Republican fundraising machine has raised more than the Democrat Party machine, some 500,000 individuals gave money to Obama's campaign in August alone. In fact, he goes into the closing weeks of the Presidential race with considerably more in his campaign treasury than McCain.
In sum, Obama has not only rebuffed Hilary Clinton's considerable challenge but has overcome the cynicism or the apathy of many US citizens. And he has done it with a combination of breathtaking rhetorical skill, adept campaign management and a consistent, focused message that centres on two linked concepts - change and hope. And it is in their linkage that their power resides.
After all, it is one thing to call for change – every opposition party does the same - it is quite another to actually make people believe that it is possible and that it will be the right kind of change. And that is why Obama's focus on hope is so important. In his Iowa acceptance speech, he put it this way:
"Many months we've been teased, even derided, for talking about hope but hope is not blind optimism. It is not ignoring the enormity of thetasks ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. It's not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists that despite all the evidence to the contrary that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it and work for it and to fight for it"
Jim Wallis, the US Christian social activist, put it similarly at LICC recently:
"Hope is a choice, is a decision we make because of this thing that we call faith. Hebrews says hope is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. My best paraphrase of that still is: Hope means believing in spite of the evidence and watching the evidence change."
Both men share the view that hope is about the regeneration of the imagination, a belief in what is possible, and a belief that people and politicians can combine to create a different and better world. "Hope", Obama went on to say, "is the bedrock of this nation, the belief that our destiny will not be written for us but by us, by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be."
Both men are also part of the Christian community. Wallis, however, as the quote above clarifies, derives his concept of hope overtly and explicitly from the Scriptures. Obama too worships Christ but, perhaps inevitably, his rhetoric, though sermonic in rhythm, and replete with biblical priorities, sounds humanist - it's people who do it. His call to his countrymen is a call to effort, and sacrifice, a call to live and work for the ideals of their founding fathers - a just society, a free society, a better society. The America in his heart is the America of the "hope that led a band of colonists to rise up against an Empire; that led young men and young women to sit at lunch counters and brave fire hoses and march through Selma and Montgomery for freedom's cause."
It is perhaps easy for us to be dismissive of this appeal to history since we in Britain no longer have any such grand narrative to draw on, no shared, costly and glorious DNA to which to appeal – though poverty stalks our inner cities too, and the misery of our children is apparently unparalleled in the "developed" world. Still, if we had any vestige left of it, surely Obama would find it. His appeal is to the best in all of us. Indeed, his speech in Berlin brilliantly mined that city's long stand for freedom against the Russian threat and the US' partnership in the airlift that made it possible. Obama, however, used this shared past as a springboard to set out a vision for a renewed partnership between the US and Europe in bringing freedom and justice and ecological healing to our world. The best of the past lives to inspire us to make a better future.
Most strikingly, Obama is for the poor.
It comes out in almost every speech. His examples are telling - the nightshift worker looking after her ailing sister, unable to pay the health bills but trying still to get through college; the unemployed man who can't afford the petrol to drive around to find a new job; the children left behind by poor schools Of course, he too has been poor. He is the son of a Kenyan goatherd and a Kansas mother. However, though his own rise has brought him within striking distance of the White House, his success has not desensitised him to the obstacles that others face. His achievement is not evidence to him that anyone can make it but rather a constant reminder that most of the poor don't get the educational opportunities, the safe neighbourhood, the healthcare that the American dream promises, even if they do work hard and long and honestly.
Indeed, one of the most moving chapters in his elegantly written second book The Audacity of Hope is the chapter on opportunity. What is remarkable is not that Obama has policy ideas that will help the poor but that he seems, despite his Harvard Law School education and his somewhat literary language, to really understand their concerns and the danger of becoming so removed from the people he is trying to serve that he stops feeling for them. For a while, he'd had the opportunity to use private jets to shuttle him swiftly, efficiently from city to city, from meeting to meeting. However, in 2006 he'd had to revert to commercial airlines for ethical reasons. His first flight after the change was delayed, and "a kid spilt orange juice on his shoe" but, while he was waiting, a man approached him and told him that he hoped Congress would do something about stem cell research this year. He had early stage Parkinson's and a three-year-old son. "I know it may be too late for me," the man said, "but there's no reason someone else has to go through what I'm going through."
Obama's reflected thus: Those are the stories you miss when you fly on a private jet.” Whatever your view on the pressing and difficult issue of stem cell research, and many if not most Christians oppose those sentiments, Obama’s concern for the ordinary person is palpable. And it is that concern that fuels his sober assault on the Republican handling of the economy.
When Clinton left office, America enjoyed large budget surpluses and a rapidly declining national debt. Today, American national debt is $9 trillion - approximately $30,000 for every man, woman, and child. Republican tax policy has made the rich richer and the poor poorer and has contributed to a sharp loss in that sense of common interest and commitment to future generations that is vital if America is to thrive as a nation and the planet be preserved from the ravages of human selfishness. Indeed, while the received wisdom of political manoeuvring is to appeal to people's selfishness -it's the economy stupid – Obama seems to be winning by appealing to their selflessness and indeed their desire to be part of making their nation great again.
Wallis, in his exploration of the dynamics of significant change, rightly recognises the limits of political power. In a democracy, the politician puts his finger in the air to see which way the wind is blowing and acts accordingly. In other words, politicians in democracies recognise that public opinion sets limits to their ability to push through policy.
When Martin Luther King won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1964 he flew back to Washington and asked Johnson to push through a voting rights bill. Johnson told King that he simply didn't have the political capital to do it and that it would take five to ten years. For King, that was five to ten years too long and he organised a protest march in Selma. The police brutalised the marchers and the eyes of America focused on the issue. When pastors and rabbis joined the march to Montgomery, the wind changed. Johnson sponsored the voting rights bill and it was passed within five months.
Wallis' point is that the key to social change is to change the wind. And that is what social movements do – they change the wind. Wilberforce was a great man but there would have been no abolition if there had not been a social movement behind him. Interestingly, Obama may be that rare breed: a politician who is also a wind-changer, a man who has already changed the way elections are fought because of the army of volunteers who have joined him, a man who has set out a vision of change that sparks the imagination of those who had grown indifferent to politics. Indeed, more people will probably vote in this presidential election than for many a long year.
All that said, history suggests that most American evangelicals are likely to vote for McCain and Palin. And the main reasons are:
1. The Republican Party remains the primary party of choice for evangelicals.
2. Obama is pro-choice on abortion, though eager to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies.
3. Palin is an active member of a Pentecostal church and an unashamed evangelical, whereas Obama's running mate is a liberal Catholic.
4. McCain gave what many evangelical leaders saw as more decisive answers to questions on abortion and gay marriage during a debate chaired by Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church this summer. Furthermore, Obama, though an avowed Christian, is apparently unsure about heaven, may well be a universalist and interprets some Scripture in a way that betrays curiously defective interpretative skills. So, on the issue of homosexuality he writes: "nor am I willing to accept a reading of the Bible that considers an obscure line in Romans to be more defining of Christianity than the Sermon on the Mount."
Herein lies the difficulty of citizenship in any democracy: how to vote when no candidate is likely to tick all the boxes you'd like them to tick. Clinton was pro-choice and a serial adulterer but he did a whole lot more for the poor than George Bush. And the number of abortions slightly declined under Clinton but went up under Bush. How then would you vote? On single issues or on the overall direction of their policies?
The majority of American evangelicals - certainly those over 40 - appear to regard abortion and homosexuality as core principles which trump other voting factors. However Cameron Strang, founder and publisher of Relevant magazine, which targets 20- and 30-something US Christians, regards a significant portion of his readership as socially conservative and pro-Obama. "They are pro-life, they are by and large against abortion, but they're redefining pro-life to include a broader perspective," Strang says of these younger Christians. They're looking at the [Iraq] war, or pre-emptive war, as a life issue. They're looking at the environment as a Christian issue in that Jesus talks about stewardship and Jesus didn't promote excess and consumption and waste.
In fact, McCain is also pro-environment and has been a champion for initiatives to combat climate change. In that he shunned the Republican party line, as he has also done on torture and what he regards as out of control government spending. Furthermore, like Obama, he seems committed to calling Americans to a role in the world that is greater than their own self-interest. Indeed, in his self-sacrificial decision to stay in a Vietnamese POW camp with his men, even though he was sick and had been given the opportunity to leave, he demonstrated remarkable courage and integrity.
Of course, neither candidate really has the kind of proven experience that might be ideal for the most powerful man in the world. Furthermore, the challenges that America faces are formidable and any policy promises made now may well be forfeit as global circumstances change. In such a reality, what becomes vital is to make a judgement about where a candidate's core principles and competencies might lead them - Jimmy Carter was a man of rare conviction and integrity but he wasn’t up to the job; Reagan, by contrast, may have been caricatured as dumb but he sure knew how to pick a team.
I'm rooting for Obama. Here's why. Jim Wallis' bookSeven Ways to Change the World has the subtitle Reviving faith and politics. If Obama wins and he does well, he has the potential to revive faith in politics in a way that McCain clearly does not. And that, for the increasingly politically disillusioned, politically apathetic citizens of this and many other nations, might prove to be Obama's greatest and most important legacy.
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