Rupert Cornwell: Obama: In the footsteps of Abraham Lincoln
[Rupert Cornwell has written articles published in The Independent.]
America is living a strange and magical moment. In a fickle universe, US presidential inaugurations are a quadrennial rock of predictability, like leap years and the football World Cup. But never has there been one quite like the inauguration this week of Barack Obama.
The event is always a republican version of a coronation, quasi-ecclesiastical even as it flaunts its populist trappings. But when Obama takes the oath of office at noon on Tuesday from John Roberts, the Chief Justice, the occasion will be far more, a beacon of hope in a tempest of fear. The closest in modern times was in 1961, when John F Kennedy brought hope and renewal. But back then the country was not terrified, merely jaded, in an era when the fundamentals of American civilisation seemed immutable.
No longer. The meteor Obama has arrived in the midst of America's worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. But somehow that only makes it more thrilling, rather as in wartime, when life itself could be extinguished at any moment. This weekend Washington is a city, and America a country, caught between jubilation and anticipation on one side and bankruptcies, lost jobs and lost homes on the other.
But, however fleetingly, pleasure is outdoing pain. For Democrats, it is enough that after eight years one of their own is back in the White House. And even many Republicans are moved by the first black President, one of whose parents was from the Third World. And in a country where politics has so long been a business of old people, practised on behalf of old people, the young feel that at last they have a stake in the game.
Then there's the impressiveness of the man himself. Obama has a limpid intelligence and a wonderful way with words, as his inaugural address will surely confirm. But he is not a nanny like Jimmy Carter, nor does he have the manipulativeness of Bill Clinton or the amorality of Richard Nixon – to name but three conspicuously intelligent recent presidents.
Undeniably too, he benefits from a national outpouring of relief that George W Bush is gone. Not quite everyone feels that way: astonishingly, one in four Americans still believe Bush has been doing a good job. But for many, many more, in the words of Gerald Ford as he replaced Nixon, a "long national nightmare" is finally over.
In his valedictory TV address on Thursday, Bush was smug and unapologetic. He seemed to be living in a separate universe, in which America had been made safe from terror, democracy had been established in Iraq and Afghanistan, Katrina had been a rescue operation for the ages, and the US had continued to grow and create jobs – at least until the recent spot of bother, which was no fault of his.
Indeed, in this sense, the global hopes pinned on this president-elect are a huge compliment to the US. Many have been disgusted by its recent policies; some have even written the place off. But the country is capable of astounding self-regeneration. And despite its imperfections – the obscene disparities in wealth, its inability to provide healthcare to 15 per cent of its citizens – America remains the great hope of humanity. What new Russian leader or new Chinese president, let alone a new EU president, could so enthuse us?
And just maybe, this is the season of miracles. No other word, surely, describes how every passenger survived when a US Airways plane came down in the icy Hudson River. A lost sense of national unity is making a miraculous return, inspired perhaps by that greatest of all Obama speeches, to the Democratic convention in 2004, when he said: "There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America – there's the United States of America." That theme too will run through his inaugural address, and in this magical moment people will believe him.
History's rhythms too are conspiring. Yesterday Obama and his vice-president elect, Joe Biden, took the same train trip from Philadelphia to Washington that his hero Abraham Lincoln, the man who saved the Union, took in 1861. Today the pair attend a spectacular "We Are One" concert in front of the Lincoln memorial, in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the 16th President's birth. Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Day, at which the arguably the greatest of all black Americans is remembered – a perfect curtain-raiser for the swearing-in 24 hours later of America's first black President...
Read entire article at Independent (UK)
America is living a strange and magical moment. In a fickle universe, US presidential inaugurations are a quadrennial rock of predictability, like leap years and the football World Cup. But never has there been one quite like the inauguration this week of Barack Obama.
The event is always a republican version of a coronation, quasi-ecclesiastical even as it flaunts its populist trappings. But when Obama takes the oath of office at noon on Tuesday from John Roberts, the Chief Justice, the occasion will be far more, a beacon of hope in a tempest of fear. The closest in modern times was in 1961, when John F Kennedy brought hope and renewal. But back then the country was not terrified, merely jaded, in an era when the fundamentals of American civilisation seemed immutable.
No longer. The meteor Obama has arrived in the midst of America's worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. But somehow that only makes it more thrilling, rather as in wartime, when life itself could be extinguished at any moment. This weekend Washington is a city, and America a country, caught between jubilation and anticipation on one side and bankruptcies, lost jobs and lost homes on the other.
But, however fleetingly, pleasure is outdoing pain. For Democrats, it is enough that after eight years one of their own is back in the White House. And even many Republicans are moved by the first black President, one of whose parents was from the Third World. And in a country where politics has so long been a business of old people, practised on behalf of old people, the young feel that at last they have a stake in the game.
Then there's the impressiveness of the man himself. Obama has a limpid intelligence and a wonderful way with words, as his inaugural address will surely confirm. But he is not a nanny like Jimmy Carter, nor does he have the manipulativeness of Bill Clinton or the amorality of Richard Nixon – to name but three conspicuously intelligent recent presidents.
Undeniably too, he benefits from a national outpouring of relief that George W Bush is gone. Not quite everyone feels that way: astonishingly, one in four Americans still believe Bush has been doing a good job. But for many, many more, in the words of Gerald Ford as he replaced Nixon, a "long national nightmare" is finally over.
In his valedictory TV address on Thursday, Bush was smug and unapologetic. He seemed to be living in a separate universe, in which America had been made safe from terror, democracy had been established in Iraq and Afghanistan, Katrina had been a rescue operation for the ages, and the US had continued to grow and create jobs – at least until the recent spot of bother, which was no fault of his.
Indeed, in this sense, the global hopes pinned on this president-elect are a huge compliment to the US. Many have been disgusted by its recent policies; some have even written the place off. But the country is capable of astounding self-regeneration. And despite its imperfections – the obscene disparities in wealth, its inability to provide healthcare to 15 per cent of its citizens – America remains the great hope of humanity. What new Russian leader or new Chinese president, let alone a new EU president, could so enthuse us?
And just maybe, this is the season of miracles. No other word, surely, describes how every passenger survived when a US Airways plane came down in the icy Hudson River. A lost sense of national unity is making a miraculous return, inspired perhaps by that greatest of all Obama speeches, to the Democratic convention in 2004, when he said: "There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America – there's the United States of America." That theme too will run through his inaugural address, and in this magical moment people will believe him.
History's rhythms too are conspiring. Yesterday Obama and his vice-president elect, Joe Biden, took the same train trip from Philadelphia to Washington that his hero Abraham Lincoln, the man who saved the Union, took in 1861. Today the pair attend a spectacular "We Are One" concert in front of the Lincoln memorial, in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the 16th President's birth. Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Day, at which the arguably the greatest of all black Americans is remembered – a perfect curtain-raiser for the swearing-in 24 hours later of America's first black President...