NEWS | Wednesday, 21 January 2009

PRINT THIS ARTICLE

Two million people gathered in Washington yesterday for the swearing in of the new US President. Raphael Vassallo analyses his inaugural address, and discovers a more down to earth Barack Obama than expected

Beyond the rhetoric, beyond the applause, beyond the global elation at history in the making – beyond even the collective sigh of international relief, as the George W. Bush finally took his last bow from Capitol Hill – there was an unmistakable note of caution sounded in President Barack’s Obama’s inaugural speech yesterday.
It was cunningly disguised amid a kaleidoscope of carefully chosen images – many of which, like the “firefighter’s courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke”, were clearly calculated to trigger specific emotional reactions, and appeal to a collective patriotism which still clearly exists in spite of everything.
But in what will surely be interpreted as a subtle preparation for disappointment, Barack Obama also hinted unmistakably at a general scaling back of his pre-election pledges. Acknowledging “a sapping of confidence across our land – a nagging fear that America”s decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights,” Obama warned his global audience that, for all the international delirium at his own accession to the White House, the problems facing America and the world can only be overcome at enormous cost.
“Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real,” he went on (creating, it must be said, the unfortunate impression that he might have said something different just yesterday). “They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America – they will be met.”
The intended emphasis was clearly on the last few words, which fit quite neatly into a long and illustrious tradition of lofty and grandiloquent appeals to America’s undying faith in itself and its own capabilities.
But the discerning listener will no doubt have paid equal attention to the “short span of time” part.... an admission, perhaps, that some of the time frames Obama hgad proposed before the election – among them, the targeted withdrawal of troops from Iraq, or the deadline for the total elimination of foreign oil dependence – may now have to be revised in the cold light of Presidential power.
And just like all elected leaders tend to take their unpopular decisions first, leaving all the goodies until election eve, Obama also saw to it that this stark note of realism crept early into his otherwise uplifting and optimistic delivery. With a few deft brushstrokes, he painted a backdrop of bleak austerity and sober ... against which to dazzle his audience with a bold vision for change.
But will he be able to deliver on his ambitious goals? And how long will it take for the unprecedented outpour of popular support to cool, if not die out altogether?
Allowing for the above note of caution, few direct answers were forthcoming yesterday. Instead, Barack Obama returned to the theme which arguably won him the Democratic Presidential nomination in the first place: that of a America composed of vastly different yet uniquely compatible cultures, united only in their allegiance to a single, star-spangled flag.
Breaking a decades-old tradition of “one nation under God”, Barack Obama almost went out of his way to emphasize the image of America as a melting pot of diversity: “We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus – and non-believers,” he said, in what is arguably the first-ever Presidential acknowledgement of the existence, among the myriad creeds and cultures that form the United States of America, of atheists.
And while Obama demonstrated – if any proof were still needed – that America’s tradition for rousing rhetoric did not exactly die with Franklin Roosevelt, he also took care to resist the oversimplifications and gushing sweeping statements that have characterised so many of his predecessors’ efforts.
Gone, for instance, was all reference to “Axis of Evil”, or to the intrinsically Marevl Comics “moral polarisation” that would divide the world into “heroes” on one side and “baddies” on the other.
Instead there was an open invitation to dialogue; if not with the likes of Al Qaeda – to which passing reference was made as “those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents” – at least to the Muslim world in general, singled out for a specific entreaty: to “seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.”
Pundits, however, will surely have much to say about Obama’s most poetic, and at the same time most immediately unambiguous choice of imagery: “To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”
Already these words have been taken as signalling his government’s intention to enter into direct dialogue with Iran, as indeed Obama had suggested he might before the November election. Either way, they certainly suggest a new direction in foreign policy; though whether this will be effective or not remains to be seen.
It is therefore somewhat ironic that, in a speech so carefully crafted to say so much, while committing the orator to so little, Obama would be at his least convincing when it came to the issue of terrorism.
The vast, flag-waving crowd may disagree, but once you scratch beneath the veneer of evocative imagery, there is precious little difference between Obama’s message to terrorists (“we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you”) and Bush’s “We will smoke you out, wherever you hide...”
And yet, it may well be that this was all along his intention. After all, Obama began his Presidency with a generous – too generous, some might say – appraisal of his predecessor’s career. Conscious of the fractured state of the country he has now inherited, Obama’s first and overriding objective was no doubt reunite the states of America... not to sow the seeds of further division himself.

PRINT THIS ARTICLE

Any comments?
If you wish your comments to be published in our Letters pages please click button below.
Please write a contact number and a postal address where you may be contacted.