Obama sparked something in US that became a blaze
'There is something more human and decent about Obama than we normally find in politicians'
Tuesday January 20 2009
I began following Barack Obama's campaign for the American presidency in earnest about 15 months ago. In ways, it seems like yesterday; in others, it feels like half a lifetime away.
In late 2007, Obama was an outsider even in the battle for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. Hillary Clinton had her flaws, so the consensus ran, but she had just too many advantages -- not the least of which was her last name -- to be beaten.
Up close you could feel a magic building behind Obama. I felt it at events from Boston to Los Angeles as autumn turned to winter. Yet it is a rally that took place very close to where I now live that still sticks out in my mind.
In November 2007, the first contests with Clinton were still more than a month away. An Obama event was announced for the famous Apollo Theatre in Harlem. The night was bitterly cold, but the queue to see the young candidate stretched for more than a city block.
Harlem savours its reputation as the unofficial capital of black America but the crowd inside the theatre was comprised of people of every ethnicity. A thrill seemed to pass through them as Obama invoked the civil rights movement, not just as a vehicle of black advancement but as the ultimate proof of the power of collective action.
"I will never forget that the only reason I am standing here today is because somebody, somewhere, stood up for me," Obama said that night. "And because that somebody stood up for me, somebody else stood up, even when it was hard, even when it was risky, even when it wasn't popular.
"And because a few people stood up, a thousand more stood up. And then a million more stood up. And standing up with courage and conviction, somehow they were able to bring about a transformation of this nation."
The same principles were to drive his own candidacy. Obama sparked something in the American psyche. The spark became a blaze that consumed not just the hopes of Hillary Clinton but those of his eventual Republican opponent, John McCain, as well.
By October 2008, Obama could call on the support of more than 1.5 million active volunteers. By then, I was travelling with the campaign. On one memorable day, I looked over a crowd of 100,000 people who had turned out to see him in St Louis. We left that event, got back on his campaign plane, and went to Kansas City. Another 75,000 awaited him there. People lined the roadsides to cheer him on his way.
The huge numbers did not rally to Obama's side just because of his policy proposals, serious and credible though they were. He awakened in them something deeper: a hope, perhaps, that the United States was still capable of living up to its founding ideals. At 5pm Irish time today, Obama will stand two miles from the spot where Martin Luther King spoke about his dream, place his hand on a Bible once owned by Abraham Lincoln, and be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. The sceptics say that we still know too little about him. But that is not entirely true.
We know that, for all his supposed inexperience, he can display a steadiness that puts more seasoned politicians to shame. While Hillary Clinton presided over a campaign riven by fractiousness and in-fighting, and John McCain lurched from gamble to gamble, the president-elect's team lived up to their 'No Drama Obama' nickname at every opportunity, pressing on calmly towards the White House.
We know that this steadiness is not to be mistaken for a lack of boldness. In 2002, when Obama's bid for a US Senate seat representing Illinois had not even officially begun, he came out against the looming war in Iraq, predicting "a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences."
At the time, it was a politically unpopular position to adopt. But Obama did not waver -- and the American public eventually came to agree with him.
We sense, finally, that there is something different about Obama. To read his memoir, 'Dreams From My Father', or to watch him with his wife, Michelle, or his daughters Malia and Sasha, is to be reminded that there is something more human and decent about him than we normally find in politicians.
Is he perfect? Hardly. He can seem overly ponderous at times, prone to hubris at others.
Still, his immense political skills, his progressiveness on the vast majority of issues and his sheer likeability have already restored some sense of hope to America. That hope has its counterpoint. The US is adrift on a sea of troubles: from soaring unemployment to the war in Iraq; from a spiralling budget deficit to its ailing healthcare system.
When Barack Obama is inaugurated today, he will be standing at a political summit, but he will also have many mountains left to climb.
I'll be in Washington for the occasion. My mind will drift back to that night in Harlem and to all the other nights on the campaign trail. No doubt I, like everyone else, will have cause to criticise him in the months and years to come. But today, like so many millions in America and around the world, I will cross my fingers for him. I will wish him well.
Niall Stanage is the author of Redemption Song: An Irish Reporter Inside The Obama Campaign
