Obamania: A call for West Wing series eight begins

Democrats - living the West Wing dream?

There is something nauseating and distasteful about stadium speeches.  It must be because it’s a reminder of all those music concerts where the ecstasy of entertainment is interrupted by stars – some fading – making speeches off the back of the crowd’s euphoria.  They call on us to change the way we live, and that all of us, each and every one of us, together, have the power to end poverty, and make the world a better place.  The crowd whoop and cheer, go home on a high and the next day its business as usual – back to work, looking after their families, carrying out their daily lives and the world’s ills are for another day.

Last night in Denver it was Obama-aid.  With the 75,000 around the Democrat nominee it was a call to arms for change and for the rest of the American people to come together and have the audacity of hope.  Captured on camera it looks like moving stuff even here in this stiff-arsed country with a stiff-arsed prime minister as some yanks see us.  I’m sure most of us would have rained “Yes we can” out of us and hung on every sentence if we were there.  But at a time when McCain is ahead in the polls after months of Obama-domination in the polls, the table has started to turn.  It all seems to have gone slightly sour soon after his whirlwind tour of Europe and the Middle East – which climaxed in his speech to tens of thousands in Berlin.

Last night he offered little substance.  We know that he is pro-choice, that he will support universal healthcare, cut taxes for 95% of America, and help America go green and wean themselves away from their oil thirst.  Like us Europeans he will talk to the likes of Iran and Syria and he has pledged to cut carbon emissions by an incredible eighty percent by 2050 – though Bill Clinton did manage to halve sulphur emissions during his two terms it has to be said. 

The question of how he will do all this remains unanswered.  How on earth will he end Middle East dependency on oil, surely not by green measures alone?  How will he cut taxes for 90% of Americans with the size of the US deficit (although that has started to shrink this year and the economy at present is not looking quite as tumultuous as Obama describes – the US markets are looking a little rosier)? 

His challenge to McCain can easily be answered next week in the Republicans Minneapolis convention.  Obama simply brandished McCain as being like Bush.  He said McCain voted for Bush 90% of the time, and that he think’s Bush is right 90% of the time.  All McCain has to prove to the swing voters and the disenchanted Democrats is that he is not George Bush.  His stance on torture and previous condemnations of Guantanamo would the first chasm that comes to mind between McCain and the incumbent in the White House.

More convincing in Obama’s speech was his attack on the Republican party’s mantra – even if McCain in the past has not subscribed as wholeheartedly as he says – and the poetic jibe that they “give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is – you’re on your own. Out of work? Tough luck. No health care? The market will fix it. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps – even if you don’t have boots. You’re on your own.  Well it’s time for them to own their failure.  It’s time for us to change America”.

Yet most Americans at present accept that argument.  That’s one of the main reasons the Democratic party is twelve points ahead and set to take both houses with sizeable majorities.  Yet there is a plague infesting the Obama house and it is declining poll ratings with the cure being substance which even doctor Biden, who has syringes full of it, may not be able to cure.  It is no good having the substance in your deputy, you need it yourself.  Americans outside the Invesco Stadium were waiting for the answer: “yes he can” change, he can offer substance and he can do more than make emotive, grand stand speeches.  They are still waiting.

The problem and concerns for the Democrat Presidential race is that Obama is living the Democrat dream and not the reality.  This is live political pornography for all those viewers of the West Wing who longed and hoped that their country would be more like Josh Bartlet’s than George dubbyer’s can now see Obama make that so.  He can pick up the mantle where the series left off, from the hands of President Santos – the first ethnic minority President, who is said to be based on the young Illinois senator.   Maybe he can, but its time for the voice of change to change himself and prove that he can.