Barack Obama - an Afro-American -- as US President?
On November 4, 2008, the American people are going to decide who's going to lead their nation for the next four years after the disastrously shameful Bush administration finishes its tenure. A month after the election, Obama according to CNN/Opinion Research Corporation is leading over McCain - 53 to 45, with a negligible number of undecided.
But will this translate into Obama's election victory?
There are a lot of factors that are to Obama's advantage. At least, the major ones -- first, McCain, if ever he gets elected, will be the oldest president (so far, the oldest US president to be sworn into office was Ronald Reagan) at 72. Secondly, McCain may have been the strongest candidate that Republicans can field for this election, but the fact that he belongs to the same party as George W. Bush - who started the war in Iraq under the pretext of defeating Saddam Hussein's weapons for mass destruction (WMD) and sustaining the invasion of Afghanistan because of the Caspian Sea Oil Pipe thing, including the popularization of pre-emptive strike as America's foreign policy, among other things - makes the impression that another term for “similar-feathered-president” would expectedly dig the US deeper and deeper down the mire it is in now.
How about the factor of race?
Political experts in the US are almost unanimous in saying that they expect the race-factor to be a determining element in the forthcoming election. And these political pundits' prediction is supported by a Washington Post - ABC News poll says that around 30 per cent of the US voters are going to be critically concerned over the issue of race. Still, some regard the percentage to be quite low considering that much more Americans are observably not comfortable in revealing their racial bias. However, it is said that this racial bias in reality influences Americans socio-political behavior, including the electoral decisions that they make.
And this is not unknown to Obama's political rival's camp. During the Obama versus Clinton race for party nomination, the racial remark by Rev. Jeremiah Wright was played up by adversaries of Obama hoping to discredit in the process the Afro-American. It was observably a spin rather than substance.
And Obama is not unaware of the race-factor. In an article that he wrote in Time Magazine (June 26, 2008), he concluded by saying that he had a Kenyan father and an American mother, and “that could only happen in America.” Reading between the lines, Obama is stirring a feel-good attitude among the American people by implicitly saying that Americans are not racist - which they would show very concretely if they are going to earn him a set in the Oval Office.
A rather “neutral” observation by political analysts holds that race will only be a factor in the election depending on the candidates themselves. McCain is said to have said that he does not votes of people who do not vote for Obama because the latter's of Afro descent.
Just a wild musing - if Martin Luther King, Jr. were to deliver his “I Dream” speech today, will he also say: I dream that one of my people assumes the presidency on November 4?
