New dawn across the Atlantic

Whisper of how I8217;m yearning,8221; sang George M. Cohan in one of the great American songs of nostalgia, 8220;to mingle with the old time throng8221;.

Whisper of how I8217;m yearning,8221; sang George M. Cohan in one of the great American songs of nostalgia, 8220;to mingle with the old time throng8221;. Well, I8217;m yearning too, not for the gang at 42nd Street exactly, but for the America that Cohan was indirectly hymning 8212; for the Idea of America, with a capital I, which once made the United States not just the most potent of all the nations but genuinely the most liked.

Perhaps, with a future new president already champing at the bit, we are about to witness its rebirth. As a foreigner I am immune to the rivalries or seductions of American party politics, but I have loved the old place for 60 years, and I simply pray for an American leader to give us back its baraka, as the Arabs say 8212; nothing to do with religion or economics or power or even ideology, but the gift of being at once blessed and blessing.

Of course nobody can claim that the old dreams of America were ever perfectly fulfilled. They often let us down. They were betrayed by the national reputations for crime, corruption, racism and rampant materialism. Not all the presidents, God knows, were icons of virtue or even of glamour, and the benevolent Uncle Sam of the old cartoonists was more often interpreted, around the world, as a fat moron in horn-rimmed spectacles, chewing a cigar. Nobody8217;s perfect, still less any republic.

But I think it is true that only in our time has the American Idea lost its baraka. A generation or two ago, most of us, wherever we lived, loved the generous self-satisfaction of it, if not in the general, at least in the particular. The GI was not then a sort of goggled monster in padded armour, but a cheerful fellow chatting up the girls and distributing candy not as a matter of policy, but out of plain goodwill 8212; everyone8217;s friendly guy next door. To millions of radio listeners around the world, the Voice of America was a voice of decency, and one could watch the lachrymose patriotic rituals of America 8212; the hand on heart, the misty-eyed salute to the flag 8212; with more affection than irony.

For myself, I responded to them all too sentimentally8230; In those days we did not think of American evangelists as prophets of political extremism 8212; they seemed more akin to the homely convictions of plantation or village chapel than to the machinations of neocons. We bridled rather at the American assumption that the US of A had been the only true victor of the second world war, but most of us did not very deeply resent the happy swagger of the legend and danced gratefully enough to the American rhythms of the time. We thought it all seemed essentially innocent.

From an article in 8216;The Guardian8217;, February 14