Obama won – and won by a clear margin (of 8%), leaving the former front-runner and favourite (and pro-war political automaton) Hillary Rodham Clinton struggling in third place. (Incidentally, the only thing that delighted me more than Obama’s victory and Hillary’s poor showing was the fact that, on the Republican side in Iowa, the nasty former New York mayor – and, also, his party’s former front-runner – Rudy Giuliani came an embarrassing sixth (!) with a miniscule 3.5% of the vote, having been outpolled 2-1 by the only anti-war Republican in the field, Congressman Ron Paul of Texas).
Despite my normally cynical and pessimistic view of US domestic politics and politicians, and despite Obama’s shameful U-turn on Israel in recent years (he used to be a vocal critic but now the wannabe president, coincidentally, happens to have become a strong supporter of Israeli belligerence and intransigence), I cannot help but like him. He seems truly genuine, palpably decent and refreshingly normal and down-to-earth. Above all, after seven years of divisions and splits in American politics (and culture), with Red State vs Blue State, liberals versus conservatives, the secular versus the religious, he seems to be the only candidate capable of uniting the United States and rising above the partisan fray. (Preliminary indications from Iowa suggest Obama’s victory was heavily dependent on independents and Republican switchers, and his continuing electoral success will depend on them too).
As liberal blogger Matthew Yglesias acknowledges:
“I think the manner of Barack Obama's win is pretty impressive. I can't be the only one who was a bit inclined toward a cynical roll of the eyes at the idea of winning on the back of unprecedented turnout, mobilizing new voters, brining in young people, etc. That sounds like the kind of thing that people say they're going to do but never deliver on. But he did deliver. That's impressive.”
Yglesias also points readers in the direction of a December 1995 profile of Obama in the Chicago Reader newspaper which suggests the candidate’s social conscience has not at all been exaggerated or faked in recent months but in fact has deep roots in Obama’s political and personal past.
Fundamentally, however, the key reason why all sane, reasonable, decent, antiwar progressives should support Obama as a realistic, though not perfect, presidential candidate is his unstinting opposition to the Iraq war. Unlike his two chief rivals, Senator Clinton and former Senator John Edwards, Senator Obama opposed the Iraq misadventure from the very beginning. Here is Barack speaking in October 2002, five months before Bush and his cronies launched their illegal and unilateral invasion:
“I don’t oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war … I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
There is also – let’s not beat around the bush - the issue of his skin colour. Obama is not simply a black man who is so comfortable with his colour that – unlike, say, Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton – he has not chosen to run on a ‘black’ or ‘race’ platform but has instead managed to seemingly transcend racial politics and win over more white Republican voters than Clinton or Edwards; he also happens to be a man whose skin colour, ethnic origins, foreign upbringing, Muslim ties and religious moderation make him the perfect person to lead the United States in the era of the so-called ‘War on Terror’.
Why? As right-wing conservative blogger (and Sunday Times columnist) Andrew Sullivan, an unexpected yet fervent Obama supporter, perceptively and eloquently argues:
“What does he [Obama] offer? First and foremost: his face. Think of it as the most effective potential re-branding of the United States since Reagan. Such a re-branding is not trivial—it’s central to an effective war strategy. The war on Islamist terror, after all, is two-pronged: a function of both hard power and soft power. We have seen the potential of hard power in removing the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. We have also seen its inherent weaknesses in Iraq, and its profound limitations in winning a long war against radical Islam. The next president has to create a sophisticated and supple blend of soft and hard power to isolate the enemy, to fight where necessary, but also to create an ideological template that works to the West’s advantage over the long haul. There is simply no other candidate with the potential of Obama to do this. Which is where his face comes in.
“Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can.”
Winning Iowa does not, however, mean that Obama now has the Democratic presidential nomination (let alone the presidency itself) all sewn up. Far from it. Thankfully, the 330,000-odd Iowan crowd of largely ethanol farmers, pensioners and grassroots political activists who turned out to caucus in that tiny Midwestern state do not necessarily always determine the fate of the US presidential elections as some pundits and journalists might wrongly have us believe. In 1988 [15], for example, Congressman Richard Gephardt won in Iowa but failed to secure the Democratic Party’s nomination for president - instead, third-placed candidate Michael Dukakis went on to win the rest of the Democratic primaries (before sadly succumbing in the general election to George Bush Snr).
As the BBC points out:
“Very often it is not so much about winning in Iowa but doing better or at least as well as expected. Democrat Howard Dean was leading his party's polls in 2004 but after his third place in Iowa his campaign stuttered and never recovered. But an Iowa victory, while important, is no guarantee of national success. The 1992 winner for the Democrats was Tom Harkin. Trailing way behind him was Bill Clinton, who went on to capture the presidency.”
Mrs Clinton will presumably be hoping this morning that she can repeat her husband’s comeback in the coming days and weeks, beginning in New Hampshire on Tuesday. I personally hope she won’t and doubt she will. My money is on Obama and, if I had a vote, it’d be for Obama.
Who do you want?
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