Remaking of America?

By Timothy Garton Ash
IN his inaugural speech that was very good, but not the overhyped Lincolnian great, President Obama spoke both to his country and to the world. I believe that he succeeded rhetorically and can succeed practically with the first audience, despite all the current difficulties, but I’m less sure about the second. In fact, there’s a little-noted tension between the way he speaks to, for and about America, and the way he speaks to and about the world. The great theme of his whole life until now — including the literature we know he read most intensely, his own best book (Dreams from My Father) and his greatest speech so far (the Philadelphia speech on “race”) — is the blending of multiple identities in an America that will finally be at one with itself. He not only is but consciously presents himself as the apotheosis of the American dream.He promises not merely to transcend, at long last, the United States’ founding contradiction between liberty and slavery, but also to prepare America for a new order of ethnic diversity. His immediate family of Michelle and the girls already personify the first: every other day will bring some photograph of the black family in the White House. His almost encyclopedically diverse extended family, in which the languages spoken reportedly include Indonesian, French, Cantonese, German, Hebrew, Swahili, Luo and Igbo, represents the latter.As a wordsmith, he is adept at finding language to evoke this American blending of the many and the one. With time, I believe this sense of a more encompassing “we” can release significant new human energies among the less privileged members of American society. “Our patchwork heritage is a strength not a weakness,” he said, and he can make it so.Although it was American financial follies, both private and public, that originally got us all into this mess, America is probably better placed than most European countries to get out of it. That may not seem fair, but whoever said life is fair? What’s more, he can seize the chance of this crisis to make transformative investments in energy, education and infrastructure.So: the remaking of America? Yes, he can. Nothing in the future is certain, except death and taxes, but he has a better than sporting chance, especially if he is given a second term. But reshaping the world under renewed American leadership? Here I’m more sceptical.Things will surely be better than over the last eight years. That’s hardly difficult. (Beside seeing the back of Bush, one of the frankly schadenfreudian delights of Tuesday’s handover was to see former vice-president Dick Cheney trundle off looking more than ever, in his wheelchair, like Dr Strangelove.)Obama struck many notes that the world wants to hear from Washington, and struck them with characteristic grace. He spoke of the “tempering qualities of humility and restraint”. He indicated some priorities: combatting nuclear proliferation and climate change, contributing more to development in “poor nations”. He sent a special offer to “the Muslim world”: a new way forward “based on mutual interest and mutual respect”.America may be ready to lead “once more” but what if the world is no longer ready to follow? What if it believes America has forfeited much of its moral right to lead over the last eight years, no longer has the power that it used to, and that anyway we are moving towards a global multipolar system, as Washington’s own National Intelligence Council predicts?I am struck by how many little ifs and buts hedged even the customary welcoming words from world leaders. Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel offered warm and Christian congratulations, but added that “no single country can solve the problems of the world”.Nicolas Sarkozy said: “We are eager for him to get to work so that with him we can change the world.” (So, you see, France is ready to lead once more.) By the time we get to China, Russia, or an Arab world angered by Obama’s silence over Gaza, the caveats come not as delicate barbs but as heavy artillery shells.You may say: but surely Obama, of all people, understands the full complexity of the world. I think that’s right, and our great hope. At the same time, the story that he wants to tell the American people demands a reburnishing of traditional notions of American exceptionalism, mission and leadership.— The Guardian, London