Obama!

  The phenomenon of Barack Obama has been picked up by the German media.  The conservative daily Die Welt writes about a "Black John F. Kennedy". Klaus Karsten, Washington correspondent for SWR, writes that "Obama could be the next US president."  And Telepolis is positively ebullient in describing Obama-Mania in the US:

"Der Mann ist ein Phänomen. Zwar hat Obama ein Heimspiel hier in Chicago, doch in anderen Städten sieht es ähnlich aus. Die angekündigten Lesungen in Seattle, Boston und Philadelphia waren innerhalb weniger Minuten ausverkauft. Sein Buch kletterte unmittelbar nach Erscheinen auf Platz Eins der Bestsellerliste von Amazon.com. Obama absolviert dieser Tage einen Interview-Marathon mit Auftritten in der "Today Show", bei "Meet the Press" und Larry King von CNN. Vordergründig geht es dabei um sein Buch – eigentlich aber um die Frage, ob er 2008 als Präsidentschaftskandidat der Demokraten ins Rennen geht.

Nor has Barack Obama gone unnoticed in the German blogosphere.  In the left-liberal blog Der Morgen Dr. Dean has begun a series of blog-posts on the Illinois senator leading up to an enthusiastic endorsement:

"Barack Obama ist der in eine Person gegossene amerikanische Traum. Gleichzeitig ist er der Albtraum der Neocon-Plage und anderer rechtsdrehender Extremisten. Fernab von deren Vorstellunge ist Obamas Vision von Amerika ein "generous America", welches sich massiv für Chancengleichheit einsetzt, gerade für diejenigen, die über kein Vermögen verfügen."

Dr. Dean is right – the person of Barack Obama incorporates the American dream of racial harmony (Obama is the son of black father and white mother), of solidarity with the Third World (his father is from Kenya, and Obama spent some of his childhood in Indonesia), of Red State – Blue State unity (Obama’s mother is from Kansas, and he is equally at home in conservative and liberal settings). 

But what is fueling the enthusiasm for Obama is a new sense that Americans are ready to embrace hope again, after 6 years of succumbing to fear-driven hate: hatred of the other (Muslim), of the Gay, of the non-Christian, of civil liberties.  Obama reminds us of our hopeful past: in his speeches one hears the rhetoric of a Jack Kennedy and the cadences of a Martin Luther King.  In his book The Audacity of Hope, Obama writes of his run for the US Senate when he traveled around the state listening to hopes and aspirations of ordinary Americans:

"No blinding insights emerged from these months of conversation. If anything, what struck me was just how modest people’s hopes were, and how much of what they believed seemed to hold constant across race, region, religion, and class. Most of them thought that anybody willing to work should be able to find a job that paid a living wage. They figured that people shouldn’t have to file for bankruptcy because they got sick. They believed that every child should have a genuinely good education — that it shouldn’t just be a bunch of talk — and that those same children should be able to go to college even if their parents weren’t rich. They wanted to be safe, from criminals and from terrorists; they wanted clean air, clean water, and time with their kids. And when they got old, they wanted to be able to retire with some dignity and respect." Barack Obama – The Audacity of Hope

Human beings cannot live for any extended period of time without hope.  The German philosopher Ernst Bloch put hope at the center of the phenomenology of mankind in his masterpiece Das Prinzip Hoffnung (The Principle of Hope), which Bloch wrote during the darkest days of war while exiled in the United States.  What draws people to Barack Obama is precisely this promise of hope – the path out of despair towards a vision of a better future – what Bloch called the concrete utopia through positive social change. Much can happen over the next two years, but for the moment, Obama has the wind at his back.