It can also be discerned that not a few members of this constituency who are Christians, including those who did not vote for him, would expect an Obama presidency to return America to God; to re-enthrone God in the public life of America; to deal political correctness some deadly blows. No, not that anyone would expect these to happen in four years or even in eight, if he gets re-elected, but they will expect him to have begun so powerfully that it will be hard to reverse things after him. This is very important because, his membership of this constituency does not derive from the colour of his skin; it derives from his own personal faith. He is himself a Christian... a Newsweek magazine article had this to say about the faith of the man: "Born to a Christian-turned-secular mother and a Muslim-turned-atheist African father, Obama grew up living all across the world with plenty of spiritual influences, but without any particular religion. He is now a Christian, having been baptized in the early 1990s at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago…"
I was saying that the general ecstasy, the euphoria, the boundless hope that the election of Senator Barack Stephen Obama as president of the United States of America has brought about, give me the déjà vu feeling. You know; that feeling of having trodden this path before. And my gut feeling is that many Nigerians of the Yoruba stock may, if they will for one moment come up for air, can relate to the feeling. So should most Nigerians who share the Christian faith.
In my last piece in this serial, I tried to paint a picture of contemporary political history of our nation relating to how Chief Matthew Olusegun Obasanjo became President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, following years of marginalisation of two of the constituencies he came from and his performance in office vis-à-vis the values of those constituencies. It was a picture that started with the brightness of red and yellow and gradually paled through to gray and ended solidifying in pitch black.
It was such a disappointment that a man who had the opportunity of stepping into the steps of the great Mandela as Africa's number one statesman ended up in disgrace, his place in history virtually guaranteed on the wrong side.
But like I asked in closing last week, what has all of that got to do with the Obama phenomenon? How can the shenanigans of a military general with little formal education and a misguided messianic complex be compared with the prospects of a well-educated relatively young man; product of a deeply democratic culture whose credo is change and whose trajectory is clearly divinely ordained?
It certainly looks like an exercise in comparing chalk with cheese, doesn't it! And believe me, I shudder to think about it, but this is not the product of my five senses, this about an urge to point at the dangers ahead, an urge that won't go away. This, dear reader is about what my heart says as against the dictates of my head. After all didn't I enjoy it when that English man accosted my wife and me on a Hertfordshire, UK street and declared, "you guys are in the driving seat now…" you guys meaning, blacks?
Let's begin with a snapshot of the man, Obama and the "constituencies" he "represents." Easily his most important identity derives from the colour of his skin and the cultural root of his father in Kenya, Africa. That is why even people who disagree with him on certain issues, which they used to consider as non-negotiable, simply dumped all pretensions to principled stand. The buzz word became pragmatism. Such issues include abortion and homosexual rights and the uses of stem cell research. I shall return to these presently.
So, what does this constituency stand for? What are those issues upon which, as blacks, they are agreed; values with which they are identified? Well, that is a tough one, given the fact that on the one hand, African-Americans are deeply God-conscious and tend towards Christianity, and to a lesser extent Islam; they also tend to gravitate in large numbers to the liberal wing of the political spectrum, because of its anti-slavery and equal-rights origins. Also, given that the socio-economic disadvantages the man of colour experiences in the United States has its origins from slavery and its aftermath, it should be no surprise that the mere fact of "one of their own" got close enough to winning the commanding heights led the majority to jettison other considerations. All things considered, therefore, it is clear that the black man would like an Obama presidency to quicken the pace of equality between the races economically, as his election seems to have achieved in the political area. So, they are not averse to adapting the old Clintonian (Bill, that is) campaign slogan, "it's the economy, stupid" to read something like, "it's political and economic equality, stupid."
It can also be discerned that not a few members of this constituency who are Christians, including those who did not vote for him, would expect an Obama presidency to return America to God; to re-enthrone God in the public life of America; to deal political correctness some deadly blows. No, not that anyone would expect these to happen in four years or even in eight, if he gets re-elected, but they will expect him to have begun so powerfully that it will be hard to reverse things after him. This is very important because, his membership of this constituency does not derive from the colour of his skin; it derives from his own personal faith. He is himself a Christian.
Although there are those who doubt his credentials in this respect, the facts are clear. At the height of his campaign, when as many as 12% of American believed he was a Moslem and an additional 26% thought he was raised in a Moslem home, a Newsweek magazine article had this to say about the faith of the man: "Born to a Christian-turned-secular mother and a Muslim-turned-atheist African father, Obama grew up living all across the world with plenty of spiritual influences, but without any particular religion. He is now a Christian, having been baptized in the early 1990s at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago…"
The article somewhat also situated the activism that eventually led him into politics and now to the presidency in his faith when it reports: "Obama's organizing days in Chicago helped clarify his sense of faith and social action as intertwined. 'It's hard for me to imagine being true to my faith - and not thinking beyond myself, and not thinking about what's good for other people, and not acting in a moral and ethical way,' he says. When these ideas merged with his more emotional search for belonging, he was able to arrive at the foot of the cross. He 'felt God's spirit beckoning me,' he writes in his book, The Audacity of Hope. 'I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.'…At the point of his decision to accept Christ, Obama says, 'what was intellectual and what was emotional joined, and the belief in the redemptive power of Jesus Christ, that he died for our sins, that through him we could achieve eternal life - but also that, through good works we could find order and meaning here on Earth and transcend our limits and our flaws and our foibles - I found that powerful.'
Of course, Obama has other constituencies. The African at "home", expects him to do better than other Democratic Party presidents in the past, who gave greater attention to Africa and the developing world. Incidentally, it is for this reason that Bill Clinton was dubbed in certain quarters as the first black president of the US.
Another of Obama's constituencies is the youth. He fired their imagination with his campaign slogans: "Change," and "Yes We Can", which got many of them who are normally detached from the political process, to contribute to his campaign fund mobilize others and come out to vote. Obviously they have their expectations in form as well as in substance.
It is however to the expectations of his Christian constituency that I shall focus, given the nature of this column. But that is not before I have examined those of his kith and kin irrespective of faith and geographical location.
On the face of it, Obama has all it takes to make a change on the economic front. His commitment to progressive taxation which opponents have dubbed socialist because of its wealth distribution possibilities has the ability of reducing poverty among the most vulnerable. The economic ambience he is inheriting, ordinarily one of adversity, actually gives him room for the kind of creativity and engineering that would be required to bridge the gap between rich and poor, between the haves who are predominantly whites and the have-nots - a sizeable percentage of whom are blacks and Hispanics. The sheer brilliance of his economic team and the breath of their experience and exposure, as well as the mix of policy orientation, indicate that exciting times are indeed ahead. That's why pundits are already talking about a so-called Obama's Third Way.
It is simply hard not to get carried away by all these possibilities, but I am not. And, if the lord tarries, I'll tell you why in the concluding part of this serial next week.
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