Reactions to Obama's Historic Moment From Around the Globe

AlterNet. Posted January 21, 2009.

The first president of black origin in the United States takes on an outlook of the same color. With his intelligence and competence, he would seem to have the situation under control.

The editorial lists Bush's legacy, Obama's own lofty rhetoric, the decline of American credibility and …

The recession. As Obama has repeated this week, this is the worst crisis since the great depression of the 30's.

Everyone is permitted to suspect, furthermore, that we have not yet hit the bottom. While unemployment is already almost three million people, Obama offers to create the same number of jobs. It isn't clear how he will be able to achieve that. The fiscal deficit will be at least three times bigger than that of 2008; with its 1,200 trillion dollars, it is the biggest since the Second World War as proportion of GNP (8.3%). These figures do not take into account Obama's package. This could be an uncontrollable contributing factor of future hyperinflation and the depression of the dollar. Will better times come?

Many American pundits have suggested that Obama's election relegates racism to a relic of our bitter past. Not everyone agrees, as this story in Germany's Die Welt illustrates …

Ed Buren is afraid of blacks. He's afraid of the black man that will enter the White House … and he's afraid of blacks in general. "I don't want anybody like that making decisions about me or my life," he says. Almost threateningly he adds, "That's the way it is." He won't speak the president-elect's name aloud, but he takes pleasure in repeating his middle name: Hussein, like Saddam.

Ed Buren lives in Stone Mountain, Georgia, a small town east of Atlanta. He comes off as a cartoon character in a book of clichés, a redneck as the reactionary backwoods folks here are called. They may sound dull, bizarre and outdated, but voices like Ed Buren's are heard with increasing frequency since the November 4th election, the mouth usually hidden behind the hand.

He said he voted for John McCain, reluctantly and with a heavy heart because McCain was too liberal for him, by which he meant McCain was too moderate. He finds it hard to believe that his countrymen actually voted Obama into office – and with a solid majority of nearly 53 percent and 365 electoral college votes.

There must have been something rotten going on, some sort of a conspiracy. "The blacks rigged the outcome, along with the gays and the Spics," Ed says. ("Spics" is the jargon Ed Buren and his friends use to describe Latinos). Then he turns his attention to the steaming sausage dinner he ordered – knackwurst, bratwurst, white wurst, scalded wurst. He bites into everything as savagely as if the sausages were his worst enemy.

Obama's candidacy mobilized many young and black voters, above all in America's southern states. At the same time, however, the unhinged side, the reactionary face of the South also became more visible. In some states and counties Obama's candidacy led to a backlash among white voters, Democrats as well as Republicans. In Arkansas and Louisiana, more people voted Republican in 2008 than in 2004. In Lamar County, Arkansas, John McCain won 76 percent of the vote, five percent more than George Bush got four years earlier.

But most of the focus in the international press was on global issues. In Kenya's Daily Nation, editors expressed hope that America would return to a policy of collaboration with the rest of the world …

It was one pf President Obama's predecessors of yore, Theodore Roosevelt, popularised using the African proverb, "Speak softly and carry a big stick".

It is unfortunate that many American leaders since have forgotten the simple dictum, preferring arrogance and bully-boy tactics in their relations with the rest of the world.

The upshot is that the respect the sole superpower used to command has been replaced by suspicion and loathing. President Obama must move decisively to restore faith, trust and respect as a cornerstone of US foreign policy.

If the US treats the rest of the world as friends and partners, it might find that the hate it attracts will dissipate, and so will some of the attitudes that make the country a prime target for international terrorism.

The Irish Examiner notes that Obama's greatest challenge may be dealing with the end of American hegemony.

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