Booking the political centre-stage

Will agenda dominate the fight for the US presidency, or identity? As Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama enter the fray, the answer may lie in the books they wrote

In his enthralling new book 8212; The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream 8212; Barack Obama recalls a sobering lunch in late September 2001. He was meeting with a media consultant on making a bid for elected office. 8220;You do realise, don8217;t you, that the political dynamics have changed,8221; Obama was told. They looked down at a newspaper on the table, and the consultant continued: 8220;Really bad luck. You can8217;t change your name, of course. Voters are suspicious of that kind of thing. Maybe if you were at the start of your career, you know, you could use a nickname or something. But now.8221; And, in Obama8217;s evocative prose, 8220;his voice trailed off8221;.

In Living History, her 2003 memoir of life in the White House during Bill Clinton8217;s two terms 1992-2000, Hillary Rodham Clinton recounts an episode during his first presidential campaign. She8217;d already become a focus of attack by Republicans, and phrases like 8220;radical feminist8221; were flying thick and fast, given her strong career background. 8220;My new status hit home over something mundane,8221; she wrote. 8220;I had ordered new stationary to answer all the campaign mail I was receiving. I had chosen cream paper with my name. Hillary Rodham Clinton, printed neatly across the top in navy blue. When I opened the box I saw that the order had been changed so that the name on it was Hillary Clinton.8221; She returned the box, and demanded the original order.

In what promises to be a most interesting fight for the Democrat nomination to run for the American presidency, Obama and Clinton 8212; both having now made public their intention to enter the fray 8212; will be keenly watched for reasons couched in these extracts. Even as they put forth their agenda, their identities and how they choose to articulate those identities will play a critical role in the texture of the campaign.

Their books provide clues.

Clinton8217;s book, in fact, drew immense criticism for her refusal to be drawn into controversies of the past, of her husband8217;s Arkansas governorship and his presidency. It was almost as if she was clearing the slate, so that she could get on her own terms with the task ahead 8212; then rumoured and now confirmed 8212; of trying to gain the American presidency in her own name. Bill Clinton had once said of the couple, 8220;buy one, get one free8221;, but she wrote in the book of the difficulty in getting accustomed to such a 8220;derivative position8221;.

It will be a tough balancing act. The last name 8216;Clinton8217; gives her candidature a strong buzz, but to what extent can she strike out to claim a separate identity as 8216;Hillary Rodham8217;?

Obama8217;s book is more of a manifesto than a memoir 8212; that was done with his 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father, about tracing his absent father and his larger family in Kenya. It puts forth a political agenda, of getting past America8217;s current polarisation and partisanship by reconfiguring the centre ground. He traces this back to the tumult of the 1960s, and finds that the Democrats are confused.

A telling passage: 8220;Mainly, the Democratic Party has become the party of reaction. In reaction to a war that is ill conceived, we appear suspicious of all military action. In reaction to those who proclaim the market can cure all ills, we resist efforts to use market principles to tackle pressing problems. In reaction to religious overreach, we equate tolerance with secularism, and forfeit the moral language that would help infuse our policies with a larger meaning.8221;

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He then proceeds to hazard a way forward, a way towards becoming a 8220;deliberative democracy8221;.

In all this, while discussing a way of harnessing America8217;s Constitution, its history, its place in the global order, he provides context with his own experience. The challenge 8212; and also opportunity 8212; for Obama lies in this scattered detail. Because it would be interesting to see how the US and the rest of the world respond to the prospect of an American president of his background. The reactions in themselves would say a lot about the perspective of those reacting.

Obama8217;s of mixed parentage 8212; Kansas mother and Kenyan father, who8217;s been absent through most of his life, though in that 1995 book he traced back his roots to a larger family in Africa. He spent his early childhood in Hawaii and then moved to Indonesia at the age of six, since his mother had married an Indonesian man, and enrolled in a local school for a few years. It is this background that8217;s sparked off the latest bit of controversy. Later on, his resume has all the correct credentials, law school, Harvard Law Review, inner city work, civil rights work, teaching courses in constitutional law, Illinois state legislature, and then of course the US Senate.

So, just as Clinton appears to be distancing herself from her past to gain an identity sufficiently separate of her husband8217;s, Obama8217;s tangled inheritance is always in close proximity. Such may be the different consequences of gender and ethnicity. The nomination process will be interesting: let8217;s see if it becomes an occasion for America to reimagine itself.