The significance that Barack Obama has taken on in the rest of the world is enough to make even the most devoted Obama supporter blush. According to this op-ed article from France’s Liberation, ‘Disgraced today throughout the four corners of the globe, America would in a single leap, resume its lost grace, its capacity to inspire the imagination, that combination of myth and reality that makes it the country of all possibilities – the democracy par excellence that has such power of seduction and likeability, despite all of its gaping flaws.’
By Bernard Guetta
Translated By Sandrine Ageorges and Pascaline Jay
January 9, 2008
France – Liberation – Original Article (English)
Significantly less stupid in the White House, totally admirable in Iowa, America is reshuffling its cards. Threatened by recession, mired in Iraq and confronting an unprecedented loss of global prestige, she reinvents, changes and innovates, as one would begin a new life after years of wandering.
If today’s New Hampshire primary confirms Thursday’s caucus result, and a mixed-race man in his forties named Barack Hussein Obama – he’s no John Smith –stands a good chance of embodying the power of the United States in one year.
This is something that TV series’ and Hollywood have long anticipated. For decades now, Blacks have been running major cities and have served in the House of Representatives. For eight years under Condoleezza Rice and before her Colin Powell, Blacks have overseen American diplomacy. But a Black man married to a Black woman – a Black family in the White House – that would be a second emancipation, a genuine one – to former-slaves who have remained outcast America.
With this amazing result the page would be turned, shame overcome, American society would draw new strength and new and legitimate pride that would bring cohesion, and the earthquake on the international scene would be even greater.
Disgraced today throughout the four corners of the globe America would in a single leap, resume its lost grace, its capacity to inspire the imagination, that combination of myth and reality that makes it the country of all possibilities – the democracy par excellence that has such power of seduction and likeability, despite all of its gaping flaws.
After the Bush years, it would be a total image reversal, as fruitful and necessary as when America under Roosevelt became the global locomotive of the welfare state, social protections, or under Kennedy, when idealistic young people united and mobilized against racial discrimination.
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