Everyone has there historical predessors for Obama. For some, it is Kennedy, because he was young, idealistic and represented a burst of new energy for the counrty. Martin Luther King Jr. has been brought up frequently. Like Obama, he has great symbolic value in terms of the fight for civil rights for blacks. Since the US is depicted now as a country facing gigantic crises, Obama is also being compared to Lincolin and FDR, who had to meet the challenges of the Civil War and the Depression, respectively. There are even people who compare Obama to bad old Hitler, because of his ability to rouse the crowds. Hitler may have been mediocre if he can attract so many comparisons to people who clearly won't have so great impact on history.
All of these comparisons are quite flawed and mine will be as well. However, it does not seem to have been made yet. For me, Obama's historical parrells are Joseph Stalin, Benjamin Disraeli, Septimus Severus (he was actually an African) and Obama is should have no trouble matching Stalin and Severus in greatness. Disraeli was a multi-talented genius, but we would expect no less from a Jew. Would Napoleon or Kennedy count? They don't seem quite different enough in race though there cultural background may just as different from the ruling elites in the countries they wen ton to rule. I am thinking more about people who came from a completely different cultural background.
The major significance of Obama is that he is a person from a foreign culture (or at least half from a foreign culture) who has truly immersed himself in Western culture and quickly risen to the top place. Obama might really be the most dramatic example of this in history. His father seems to have been a real tribesman and he has risen to being the top man in the modenr equivalent of the Roman empire, an empire that is even more powerful than Rome in its global scope and the influence of its culture and ideals. The US is the empire that is the apogee of Western civilization. Though this clearly aided by the US being the most truly multi-racial, purely philosophy based, nation in history. Obama's election shows the US has succeeded in being based on philosophy and not race or nationality.
The point might have been made that after years of Bush trying to spread our values by force, we got a president that is an example of how those values spread through soft power.
Perhaps I should go back to my conservative, Western triumphalist, publications to look for publishers of this piece in praise of the significance of Obama? The right needs to have its own angle on praising Obama. What I am saying is exactly what the Criterion would have said about it. My point boils down to: Obama's success is not about [the petty matter] of race relations in the US but in fact shows the success of Western civilization. Even as the eternal night of Eastern dominance, which we have feared since the days of Herodotus, seemed to have arrived, we showed in electing Obama that we could still co-opt the barbarians. We showed that Bush may have failed in imposing our values through force, but we can still succeed because the values are both the best and the most inclusive.
This is one of the two reasons why the Chinese government hates Obama, even though their people have a 70-80% rate of favoring him. The reason they want to think of any justication possible to show that the US could not elect a minority is that they want to show that Wetern values do not have the ability to both attract and include non-western peoples. Of course, they also don't like the idea that another major power can give its minorities such an important position in society.
The other reason for their not liking the democrats is that they attempt not to be an oligarchy representing the interests of the rich, which is essentially what the communists are. Their cynical storyline of American politics is that both parties are essentially the same corrupt group that serves the rich. They know that the republicans are even more this way. Everybody knows that China is actually the extreme version of the Republicans. Here the party actually is business.
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