By Rajen Barua
It’s time to congratulate President Barack Obama, for we Americans have elected him for the Presidency for a second four-year term. Millions rejoice in his victory and many more millions in the world are simply relieved at the election outcome.
Barack Obama came from a working class environment. He is an embodiment of the American dream. Four years ago, people all over the world greeted Barack Obama’s election with euphoria, because by electing the first-ever black person as President, Americans have inspired the world and have shown that the so called American dream is alive and well in America. Now by re-electing Obama for a second term, Americans have reassured the world that the colour of his skin doesn’t matter for the American public, and that his vision for the future and his action items resonated well with the majority of Americans. The re-election of Barack Obama has however much deeper significance for America and as well as for the world at large.
First, just to have a perspective, it is important to note that he is only the third Democratic President, after Roosevelt (1936) and Clinton (1996) to be elected for a second term. Second, this election has proved the strength of the oldest and the greatest democracy of the world, ‘by the people’, one more time, and that money and power, after all, cannot buy the American election. While both sides spent millions of dollars, the Republicans spent high dollars with the backing of Wall Street and Corporate America. The Democrats spent lower dollars backed by millions of individual middle class Americans. The outcome showed that the American election is still an election by the common people, the middle class, conducted under strict democratic rule of the law, and not by money or power. It is indeed a significant characteristic of this world’s leading democracy for other nations to emulate.
Third, it is to be noted that besides fighting against higher Republican dollars, the middle class Americans were able to elect Barack Obama against heavy odds of current high unemployment and a weak US economy – a persistent attacking point for the opposition party. This simply showed that the majority of Americans decided to look at Obama’s long term vision rather than the price of gas at the pump station. The majority has shown more faith in Barack Obama to fix the economy and to take the US to a better future, than the Republicans. They simply wanted to give him more time to finish the job that he started. This is a great relief to Obama and to those millions who support his vision.
Fourth, it is significant, and to Obama’s credit, to note that he won the election with the majority votes of the following groups: African-Americans (93%), Asian Americans (73%), Hispanics (71%), Jews (70%), Women (55%), the Young (55%) and the highly educated white professionals, gays and lesbians, and other minority groups. One may wonder which group did not vote for him. The obvious missing group, of course, is the White male. Yes, Obama lost the White general male votes significantly; he received only 39% of their votes. Now before we jump to any conclusion of racial undertones, let us also note the fact that no Democratic Presidential candidate has ever received a majority of the White male votes since 1972; the highest percentage ever received was by Jimmy Carter (47%) in 1976; and note also the fact that Obama received exactly the same percentage of White male votes that President Bill Clinton received in 1992 (39%). In fact, in some localities, Obama received majority White male votes. This simply reveals that it is not because of race or the color of his skin that Obama did not receive the majority White male votes; it is because of ‘something else’, and that ‘something else’ is the essence of the conservative Republican Party which the party is trying to realize.
All said and done, the conservative Republican Party is overwhelmingly white and basically Christian. It is the group that practically controlled traditional America for the last 200 years, since the birth of the nation in 1776 till about the 1960s. Now that control is shrinking due to various reasons. According to the 2011 census, 63% of the US population is white; 17% Hispanic and 13% black, and with the growing Hispanic population and the influx of new immigrants, it is simply a question of time when the Whites will become a minority. And this election has proved that if a strong visionary leader like Obama can create the right coalition of all the minority groups along with the moderate Whites, the Whites do not have to be a numerical minority to lose that power.
So the conservative Whites need to do a double soul searching which way to go, because that soul searching may sometimes lead to the wrong side. When Republican George Bush won the Presidency in 2001, many conservative Republicans looked at it as their last ditch opportunity to regain control. Many think that waging of the Iraq War, (the ‘dumb’ war in the words of Obama) was part of that effort. That war, also supported by the UK (Tony Blair), may also be looked at as an effort to regain the lost control of the Anglo-Saxon heritage in the Middle East. The prescribed imperative is to divide the world into ‘good’ and ‘evil’ camps, wage wars, and continue the process by policing the world with military might. One may see here the divine combination of Christianity, Capitalism and Just War (Dharma Yuddha) for the future of human civilization. The foundation of the traditional America is based on similar principles that resulted in the bloodshed of 200,000 Red Indians and many displaced. Looking at the election from that angle, Obama’s victory this time may signal the final blow to the possible white Anglo-Saxon supremacy under the Republicans.
In the meantime, President Obama is ready to move towards the future with his new vision. The issues on the table are tax reforms for fair share for all, liberal health care system (Obama Care) for all, building an intellectual infrastructure for educational opportunities for the middle class, a balanced energy plan, a meaningful environmental policy and many others.
On the international front, Barack Obama is already is pursuing a progressive and humanistic policy of trying to resolve critical issues through dialogue rather than through confrontation, supporting and encouraging democracy with pragmatism, and trying to treat all countries as equal partners rather than the USA taking a position of policing the world with its military might. In the coming years, we are definitely going to see more of his engaged foreign policy rather aggressively.
With that in view, it is no wonder that the President has already visited Myanmar, the country which is just opening its doors to democracy. This is what he said in Rangoon addressing the new democratic government, “When I took office as President, I sent a message to those governments who ruled by fear: We will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist. So today I have come to keep my promise and extend the hand of friendship.” This is a message of hope and support to all emerging democratic countries in the world. A democratic Burma has lots of promises for India and the North East India in particular in the form of more opportunities for business and cultural exchanges by taking advantage of the Look East policy in an India that is fast evolving. It is hoped that India will take advantage of the vision of such a world leader for advancing human rights and democracy in the world.
It is inspiring to know that a great part of Obama’s American dream was inspired by Mahatma Gandhi on whom he commented thus, “In my life, I have always looked to Mahatma Gandhi as an inspiration, because he embodies the kind of transformational change that can be made when ordinary people come together to do extraordinary things.”And that, I think, is the moral strength of Barack Obama.
Rajen Barua is an engineer by profession and a writer by passion. He lives in Houston, Texas with his family and can be reached at [email protected]
(The author can be contacted at [email protected])