Opinion

Obama: Living up to Expectations?
By Dr. Syed Amir
Bethesda, MD

Nearly four centuries have elapsed since Africans were first brought to the North American shores and forced to work in servitude until slavery was legally abolished in 1865, following a bloody civil war and the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Widespread racial discrimination, however, continued to be practiced even after slavery was outlawed.

In many states, Negroes, as they were then called, had to sit at the back of buses, could not eat in restaurants or stay in hotels, much less aspire to any elective office. In 1901, Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States, took the unprecedented step of inviting Dr. Booker Washington, the highly respected president of Tuskegee, a historic black college in Alabama, to dinner at the White House with his family. Although the event had been kept confidential, the news leaked out, causing outrage, especially in the South.

A New Orleans newspaper moaned that Roosevelt had acted as if "the negro is the social equal of the white man." Later in the fifties and sixties, peaceful civil rights movements made most white Americans, especially in the north, conscious of, and uncomfortable with, the abominable practice of racial segregation.

Since then, we have traveled a long way. The victory of Barack Obama in last Tuesday’s elections will be considered by all criteria to be a major historic and landmark event which would have been hard to imagine only a few years ago.

Although President-elect Obama’s heritage is biracial (his mother was white, his father a black Kenyan), he nevertheless is classified as black or African-American in this country. His election to the highest elected office, and perhaps the most powerful position in the world, is a testimony to the maturity and wisdom of the American electorate which transcended racial and ethnic prejudices. Hopes are now raised that he will prove to be a transformational leader, ushering in a new dawn in foreign and domestic policies and extricating the nation from the disastrous Iraqi war.

There will be a plethora of political commentaries in the coming days and weeks analyzing and dissecting the election results and serious studies of the elections undertaken by the strategists from both political parties to determine what lessons can be drawn from them to win future elections. The fact is that the greatest ally that Obama had on his side was the confluence of factors which would have made the success of any Republican candidate extremely difficult, if not impossible. President Bush’s policies are disapproved by nearly 70 percent Americans, a negative rating worse than that which President Nixon had at the peak of the Watergate scandal in the early seventies. It is no surprise that neither McCain nor any of the Republicans contesting a congressional seat invited the president to campaign for him.

In additions to the intrinsic advantages he enjoyed, Obama ran a brilliant campaign that was virtually flawless, supported by huge amounts of campaign funds. “Change” became his defining theme, as he labeled McCain the clone of Bush and characterized his potential presidential term as a mere extension of Bush’s eight-year long presidency. McCain in the waning days of his campaign attempted unsuccessfully to dissociate himself from the failed policies of the present Government. A hero from Vietnam War, he had built his campaign on his advocacy of strong defense and a belligerent policy towards Iran and Russia; however, these issues ceased to resonate with the electorate as Iraq receded into the background as a major concern of the American public.

The decisive and severe setback to McCain’s hopes was delivered in late September with the catastrophic failure of the American financial system that threatened the collapse of the entire global economy. As the Bush administration desperately tried to take control of the financial mess, the public blamed the Republicans for failure to foresee and forestall it.

The selection of Sarah Palin as the vice presidential candidate, while energizing the narrow conservative base, proved a big mistake as it showcased McCain’s poor judgment. She possessed neither the experience nor intellectual depth for the high office. As often happens, the defeated side is now engaged in an acrimonious debate about who was responsible for the rout. Some of the McCain’s campaign staff have launched unseemly attacks on Palin. However, she can hardly be blamed for the failure of the staff to evaluate her qualifications before nomination.

McCain’s campaign, seemingly adrift and unable to find a cohesive theme to attack Obama, was also plagued by monetary and organizational problems. Paradoxically, the tough primary battles with Senator Clinton also helped Obama, enabling him to polish and refine his debating skills and giving him opportunities to rehearse answers to a series of negative issues raised against him. By the time he won his party’s nomination, his opponents had few new issues left that had not been extensively debated already. Some of the more disgraceful moments in the campaign came when Senator McCain’s allies, not with his consent, pejoratively described Obama as an Arab or Muslim or both. To his credit, the former Secretary of State, Colin Powell, was the only public figure who, during his appearance on a Sunday talk show, had the moral courage to ask what was wrong with being a Muslim in America.

One of the longest and costliest elections in our history has now ended, but the difficult task of steering the nation out of the present crisis is just beginning. People around the globe have celebrated the Obama victory. The expression of joy and sense of jubilation felt, especially by the African-American community, on reaching this milestone is well justified. However, we have to be careful of overdoing the merriment, lest it raises unrealistic expectations. While President-elect Obama is an African-American, he shares no genetic memory of slavery experienced by the vast majority of black Americans. He had had little exposure while growing up even to the Kenyan culture where his father’s family came from, since he was abandoned by him when was only a few years old. Significantly, during his lengthy campaign, he carefully and studiously avoided making an issue of his ethnicity.

Obama has attracted a great deal of support from Muslims in this country and abroad. Some, who have pinned unreasonable hopes on his elections, however, may get quickly disillusioned with his policies as he assumes the reins of power. Many of us, despite his unequivocal assertions that he is not a Muslim, cling to the hope that his middle name, Husain, somehow will make him empathic to Muslim and Arab causes. The fact is that like any president, President Obama will pursue policies that in his judgment are in the best interest of this country.

If he succeeds in controlling the financial crisis, protecting us from the menace of terrorism and restoring some of the lost prestige of this country, we will be beneficiaries of his policies like the rest of the public. Ultimately, as American Muslims our destinies are inextricably linked with the fortunes of this country.

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