Much has been written analyzing the presidential election in the two plus weeks since Barack Obama defeated John McCain to put himself in line to become the forty fourth President of the United States.
I’ll save the analysis and thoughts about what an Obama presidency could look like for future posts.
In 2000, I was living in London when George Bush snuck into office. In 2004, I watched the election results on a big screen television at the Ritz Carlton in downtown Shanghai. Thus, it was particularly special this year to work on the Obama campaign. After a hectic morning in the boiler room and a surreal (read quiet) afternoon and closing of the polls, the campaign staff headed to Winston Salem’s Millennium Center to watch the election results.
Virginia was the first battleground state to be called for Obama and soon after Florida was blue. As they confirmed that Barack Obama would be President the campaign staff mobbed the stage and led the celebrations.
Now I’ve always been a somewhat reserved person and I stayed on the floor on the Millennium Center. I worked on the campaign for three phenomenal weeks, but did not think it proper to be up on stage with people that had been putting in seven days of work for three, six, nine months or longer to help us win.
But that does not change how I feel. While the economy tanks and the debate about whether or not Senator Clinton will become Secretary of State continues, I am extremely happy. President Obama is going to be a great leader and I have the utmost confidence that he can and will navigate a strong course for the US in what will be a difficult first term.
Obama’s victory is especially poignant for me because it has been viscerally painful to watch the country I love falter and wander aimlessly for the last eight years. This, at a time when the rest of the world has been moving forward. China, India, Europe, and the petrocracies are certainly hurting with the global pullback and will likely continue to have economic challenges for a while. But the US has been incredibly misguided for the 2000s. Leaders in Beijing have certainly been thanking their lucky stars that the US got itself bogged down in Iraq. A largely unfocussed, naïve US leadership has allowed Beijing to press its “peaceful rise” rhetoric while pushing its soft and hard power abroad and increasing the United States’ economic reliance on the Middle Kingdom.
So now we get back to reality. I am hopeful that President Elect Obama will use his power wisely and not overreach in his first term. It is becoming clear he will need to pick his key issues because there will not be enough capital to fund too many big initiatives. Foreign policy challenges may be on the back burner while the TARP bailouts are decided, but I am looking forward to a US government that once again acts as a global leader, rather than a global police officer. The twenty first century will be the Asian century – there is little doubt. However, the US can and should remain the dominant global power through a combination of diplomacy, hard military power, continued economic innovation, and the influence of US culture.
President-elect Obama’s books are apparently flying off the shelf in Shanghai bookstores, in spite of widespread racism and a usual ignorance or disinterest amongst most Chinese when it comes to US politics. I look at it as a sign that people recognize that President-elect Obama will be a positive force not only for the US, but for the world overall.
I am deeply proud to be an American and am extremely thankful that for at least the next four years we will once again have a true leader in the White House. A close friend related a story to me the other day: His niece lives in Taiwan. She is about ten years old and has never been to the US. Still, she chose to write a poem for her class about President-elect Obama. In the poem she wrote that Barack Obama is not black, Barack Obama is not white. He is the color of the rainbow.
