Thoughts on US elections 2008

I started to follow the course of the elections only after i read Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope some months ago. If i recall correctly, it should be just before he clinched the Democratic Presidential Nomination from Hilary Clinton. Before that, i was rather disinterested since the debate between Obama and Hilary was largely on the technicalities of policies. The only thing i could remember about Obama was that I was in the US for summer school in 2007 and in a hotel room in New York, someone in the group was watching one of Obama's speeches online and said that his speeches moved him to tears. Still, American politics remained too remote relative to my existence, even if i was in the country at that time. There was the Met and Fifith Avenue and Boston to explore and what occupied my interest were random things like the portraitist who wielded magic out of charcoal and Labyrinth, the amazing bookstore tucked away at the corner of New Haven where i picked up Michael Walzer's Just and Unjust Wars for USD$5. There was so much to see, so much to experience and so much to love about America.

Yet, I cannot adequately express my thoughts after reading Obama's book; suffice to say that his title speaks it all and it changed my outlook on life. Yet this change was not a subtraction or addition to my worldview, but an articulation and distillation of ideals that resonated inside of me. A moment of epiphany, if you will. There was something in me that clicked and I contemplated the possibilty of studying law in the US after my undergraduate studies. As I followed the course of the elections, through the news, election debates and of course the all-too-hilarious Saturday Night Live, I began to increase my appreciation and admiration of the American system, which had started more than a year ago when i was reading Tocqueville's Democracy in America for my Democracy class. There was something about the spirit of democracy that spoke of more than an electoral system or a way of governance; it was the tenacity of the human spirit to overcome odds and the will to bridge chasms between the stratas of society that enamoured me. To me, Obama embodied that American (or should i say, human) spirit. Of course, when Obama won the elections a few days ago, I was in a state of euphoria. a paradoxically calm euphoria, because i expected him to win. It just seemed to me improbable that the America would not elect him to lead the nation. But of course, I was also painfully aware of my distance from America; both physical and psychological. I am but an outsider, looking in. However, even as an observer of American Politics, I remain greatly inspired and encouraged.

I am doing this module, Rhetoric and Politics for my Honours class and I had to pick a speech and evalutate its rhetorical and political effectives. Expectantly and expectedly (my coursemates, who endured my vocal views on American politics), i picked Obama's A More Perfect Union. Critics have dismissed Obama's exemplary oratory and writing skills as nothing more than Sophistry, but personally, i sense in the now President-of-United-States an authentic spirit and sincere hopes of serving his country and upholding the ideals of humanity, articulated by the Founding Fathers of America in the preamble to the United States of America,

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Of course, President Obama has much on his hands, with the Wall Street meltdown, the war on Iraq and many other pressing issues. But i believe that America can and will overcome the challenges ahead.

May each of us find in ourselves the same tenacity of spirit.