Friday 9 October 2009

Even Obamamania has its limits

Which is the dafter response to the not quite one year anniversary of Barack Obama's election as President, and his first nine months in office?

Is it the decision of Stockholm's finest minds (*see correction below) to award him the Nobel peace prize, more or less on the grounds that he is not George W Bush (and so is cited as having created "new climate in international politics" - which is demonstrably true, as the Pew international opinion research shows, if somewhat insufficient grounds for the peace prize).



Or the slightly moderated Pilgerism of Mehdi Hasan's New Statesman cover story, despairing that the "Barack W Bush" Presidency can barely be distinguished from that of his predecessor.

I can't help feeling that the answer is both - even if the New Statesman must be rather pleased with the timing of its polemical assault.

We shall find out very shortly whether the President finds a way to accept the award with due humility and more than a little surprise - or whether he might even find a polite way to turn it down.

Were there a case for an Obama Nobel, which is surely premature at best, it would have to be based primarily on the symbolic but important issue that the nature of his campaign and his election did promise to close at least one chapter of the American story of race and reconciliation. Were there a Nobel prize for speech of the year, then his Philadelphia meditation on race in America would have been a very worthy winner.

But the apparent attempt to use the Nobel to influence future efforts on disarmament is a rather ineffective form of gesture politics, of the type one associates with the International Olympic Committee.

It is much to soon to write Obama off on the international stage, or indeed domestically.

Obama has good aspirations for the non-proliferation round, without yet decommissioning a single missile.

He has said many of the right things, at this stage, about the difficult and rocky road to Middle East peace, and is edging the reluctant Americans forward on climate change.

Those quickest to declare their disappointment with Obama are often either seeking to hold him to an agenda he has never advocated - as Naomi Klein did recently in attacking his approach to race issues - or often demonstrating a rather anti-political mindset with little sense of how to make political change happen.

And we are pleased to be holding a conference - The Global Change We Need - on Saturday November 7th tied to the anniversary of his Presidential election, to ask how we can seek build international civic campaigns for progress on these major global issues.

But even many of us signed-up Obamanauts would warn against taking the Obamamania quite so far as the Nobel Committee has done today.


[* UPDATE: Apologies to Stockholm: I am grateful to Katrine Kielos, leader writer at Aftonbladet, for pointing out the mistake - "don't blame 'Stockholm's finest minds';-) Peace prize is Oslo, we in Sweden have nothing to do with it", and providing this interesting link on why Norway has the peace prize, perhaps partly because it did not have Sweden's militaristic traditions.



UPDATE:

Here is a response from Mehdi Hasan, who has blogged further on the Nobel award at the New Statesman site.

Sunder,

Nice post and, yes, I am "rather pleased" with the timing of my "polemical assault" and I'll take the "slightly moderated Pilgerism" as a compliment.

You write, however, that:

Those quickest to declare their disappointment with Obama are often either seeking to hold him to an agenda he has never advocated - as Naomi Klein did recently in attacking his approach to race issues - or often demonstrating a rather anti-political mindset with little sense of how to make political change happen.

Hold on, if you read the piece, you'll see that I only hold him to his own words. It is Obama, who as a candidate, decried renditions, only to support them in office; it is Obama, who has a candidate, condemned Bush's use of "state secrets" to close down debate on civil liberties, only to use the same argument in court on coming to power; it is Obama who, as a candidate and as a president pledged to tackle the crisis of climate change, only to then fail to set high enough standards for fuel efficiency, or pledge much-needed funds for mitigation in the developing world, or even (!) to help polar bears in the Arctic by repealing a rule introduced by Bush which limited the level of protection offered to them from the effects of global warming. I hold the man to his own words, beautiful and eloquent as they may be. And actions, of course, always speak louder than words.

Cheers,

Mehdi

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