Farewell to Obama

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Amidst my piles of teaching paperwork, I have some historical curiosities. One I am very proud of is the special supplement from The Times (it was a long time ago, ok?!) for Obama's first inauguration.

I was 18 and a half. I'd spent my formative political years watching the United States languish under George W Bush, a buffon of a man who had proved singularly inept as president. The goodwill and sympathy that America had received on an awful day in September 2001 had had been squandered, as the Bush Administration launched an unwinnable 'War on Terror.' It had also broken international law by invading and destroying a sovereign state, on a false pretext. Yes, a brutal dictatorship had been removed, but in its place was chaos and instability. Bush had also pulled the US out of the Kyoto Accords, and was well known as a climate change sceptic. 

To cap it all, years of laissez-faire economic mismanagement had created a debt-fuelled economic bubble. When it burst, it threatened to take down the global economic order with it. It is hard to remember now, but for a few weeks in late 2008, it looked as if capitalism itself was collapsing. We were staring into the abyss.

Into this mess strode Barack Obama. I can't remember when I first heard about him, but I'm guessing it was during his duel with Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries, when he took the enormous gamble to oppose what many thought of as hers by right. I do remember when he visited Europe in the summer of 2008, after tying up the nomination. He was already being treated as a rock star politician. Gordon Brown was among the long list of European leaders who all but came out in support of Obama.

To those of us who were young, non-American, and vaguely progressive, he was the light to Bush's dark. He offered a different vision of America to that which Bush had pushed. One that, on the world stage, would work with others, rather than in the face of others. A USA where looking or being different wouldn't matter. A caring America, after years of anger and revenge.

He was just much cooler than Bush. Younger than McCain. More charismatic than our own Gordon Brown. More eloquent and intelligent than Sarah Palin.

And then they only went and elected him. As I have mentioned before, I clearly remember that day. It was as if the weight of the world had been lifted. Although not a phrase I'd heard of yet, it was morning again in America.

Of course, being US President means you are bound to disappoint. Obama has been no exception. His use of drones to carry out extra-judicial killings around the world is a flagrant violation of international law. He has failed to get much of his initial agenda through, in the face of legislative gridlock and administrative difficulties. Guantanamo Bay is still open. His use of executive orders to govern is looking very vulnerable, as they are easy to reverse. And what that Nobel Peace Prize is for is still a total mystery.

Why am I recording all this? In the grand scope of history, eight years ago is pretty much yesterday. I'm sure many of you reading this remember it too, and quite possibly remember it better than I do. To some people, Obama was simply the latest in a long line of US Presidents to come and go. And he has not managed to achieve everything he set out to, by a long shot.

But...

A long time ago, Mario Cuomo said that you campaigned in poetry, and governed in prose. Obama proved that wrong. He governed as he campaigned. With a single word; hope. Hope that the United States could become a better place. Hope that the world could become a little bit safer, a little bit more secure, a little bit fairer, for our times, and for the times to come. And that you could be calm, composed, funny, and frankly cool whilst doing it. For eight years, that was what Obama embodied, to millions of Americans, and millions more around the world. Millions like me.

Today is the inauguration of a man who is the polar opposite to Barack Obama. I am not going to waste my words on him today. We have plenty of time ahead in which I imagine I will spill many words about him.

Today instead I want to mark the exit from office of Barack Obama. I genuinely wish they could keep him. He was, is, and always shall be, my image of a US president, the mental benchmark against which I shall measure all of his successors.

And as we embark on this longest and darkest of nights, we should remember some slogans from 2008. They were relevant then. By God they are relevant now.

Hope?

Yes. We. Can.

Obama in 2008, at the Iowa Caucus, and in 2017, at his Farewell Address in Chicago