The extraordinary narrative that is Barack Obama — the first black candidate to clinch a major party’s nomination for the American presidency — now demands closer inspection. But let’s savour the story some more. Obama observed after becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee on Tuesday, “Tonight, we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another.” Obama’s place in history is secured regardless of how the journey ends. But let us also appreciate what the Obama story says about America. While other American presidents too could boast the Lincoln-like log-cabin-to-White-House story, Barack Obama has in many ways been the arch-outsider, looking in on politics with the stranger’s distancing. Raised in Indonesia and Hawaii, of mixed parentage, with a Muslim middlename, Obama is a testimony to the assimilationist dream of the melting pot. And yet, the intellectual and racial identity he has built for himself can be traced back to the black self-respect engendered by the Harlem Renaissance and W.E.B. Du Bois, et al. Henceforth, it is the journey ahead that alone will matter. High on audacious hope and the rhetoric of change, the Obama machinery has to change gear and rewrite the intra-party equations. Obama’s record with big states and the white working class doesn’t inspire the kind of hope professed by his backers — advisors, campaign planners and voters. Charges of being “untested” will not stop simply because Obama’s backers believe he has proved himself. He hasn’t yet, to more than one half of the United States. He is the world’s favourite, but not yet America’s. Obama has to make up his mind on a number of policy issues that could decide the presidential election and that will continue to engage him even if he defeats McCain. What’s Obama’s economics, for example? Will he want to take America to the economic left, as Al Gore wanted to or be the more mature, globalisation sympathetic Democrat like Clinton? An intellectual reaction against globalisation is starting in America. That’s a terrible portent. The world still needs America to lead the battle for liberal economics. How Obama responds to that may be his greatest test.
