Framing A Radical Message

By Jonathan Freedland
THE ritual performed on Tuesday on the steps of the US Capitol honoured tradition even if America’s new president stumbled over the time-honoured form of words that was his oath of office.Americans, lacking a monarchy, attach a near-sacred reverence to the inauguration that serves as a kind of coronation: its precise order of ceremonies, its protocols. And Obama did nothing to challenge that. True, Aretha Franklin sang “My country ‘tis of thee”, and Yitzhak Perlman led a distinctly modern musical interlude written by film composer John Williams. But otherwise, this was an exercise in tradition.Yet Obama delivered a message that was anything but conservative, offering a thorough rebuttal of his predecessor’s foreign policy and signalling a break in the nearly 30-year grip the notion of limited government has exerted on US politics. Taken together, what that brief spell under the blue winter skies of Washington DC suggested was the approach that may come to characterise the Obama presidency. It is conservative in style, radical in substance.So note the exclusive presence of Protestant clergy in Tuesday’s proceedings, despite the celebration of inclusivity that Obama’s inauguration symbolised for so many. What’s more, the invocation was given by Rev Rick Warren, a powerful evangelist who maintains a hard line against abortion, and backed last year’s California campaign to outlaw gay marriage. That choice outraged many on the left — among them those in the crowds who booed when Warren took the podium — but it reassured America’s cultural conservatives.Obama’s personal style is similarly comforting to the right. They like the fact that he is sober and calm in demeanour, with a wife and two daughters who could be an advertisement for family values. They would have similarly warmed as he hymned the virtues required for the US to lift itself out of the hole it is in. The challenges may be new, he said, “But those values upon which our success depends — hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism — these things are old.”Obama has written before of the pressure on a black man in a mainly white society to appear unthreatening. Whether that explains much of his public style or not matters less than its effect, which is to assure many Americans that there is nothing frighteningly radical about their new president.But just listen to what he said. In one exquisite paragraph, he wholly rebuked — and terminated — the with-us-or-against-us, force-first-not-last, macho foreign policy of the Bush era. Obama recalled the earlier generations who defeated “fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. “They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.”Obama delivered a message that many on the left had hoped he would bring, and which many on the right feared. “To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.” The notion of a president speaking in such a way, and so directly, to the Muslim world would have been unimaginable just months ago.Obama seemed to offer a warning to those dictatorships who have long been the recipients of US aid and comfort. The rulers of Egypt, among others, may have shifted in their seats as they heard Obama