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America unbound
Sunday, November 09, 2008 By Diarmaid Ferriter in New York
Liberal Americans used Barack Obama’s victory as the perfect opportunity to throw their biggest party in decades.

During the summer, when he was promoting his novel Trauma, Patrick McGrath, a writer born in London to Irish parents and now living in downtown New York, was keen to look ahead as well as reflecting on the 1970s, the decade in which the book is set. The book deals with the psychological damage inflicted by war, as witnessed by a psychiatrist working with war veterans returning from Vietnam.

McGrath was keen to emphasise the parallels with today’s America and, in particular, the sadness and despair that liberals have felt about George W Bush’s eight years at the helm. ‘‘In New York,” McGrath said, ‘‘there has been a sense of shame, of some bewilderment, of paralysis, almost.” That shame and bewilderment vanished last Tuesday night, as Obama triumphed.

On arrival in New York at 7.30pm, it was already clear that something special was about to happen, though the exceptionally moving and spontaneous scenes that unfolded a few hours later could not have been predicted. Checking me in at the hotel in Washington Square, the African-American staff, all decorated with Obama badges, were in high spirits.

The signals and exit polls from the key battleground states of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida, though based on limited figures, were positive for Obama. Stories abounded of the unprecedented long queues at polling stations in New York, where some had had to wait for up to four hours to cast their vote.

The same lengthy waits had been experienced in Massachusetts. It was apparent that many who did not vote in 2004 had voted this time.

When I reached an election party at 9pm, things were looking even better for Obama’s devout followers. A roar ripped through the living room as Ohio was declared for Obama; the champagne flowed, and artists, actors and academics chatted animatedly. By 10.30pm, it was a done deal. The host got up on a table, a bottle of champagne in each hand, and hailed the opening of a new chapter of American history.

Later, some wept openly, purging the memory of the 2004 party, the defeat of John Kerry and the trauma that followed. As we tried to absorb the scale of the transformation of America, thousands were taking to the streets outside. It was a night to savour for the veterans of the civil rights movement and the young people who mobilised as never before. They were inspired voters and they felt an urgency to elect a leader who could restore hope and the promise that the future would be better than the past.

The scenes outside were of young men and women, black and white. In black America’s spiritual capital, Harlem, residents cheered their new champion in the biggest spontaneous celebration that area had witnessed since boxer Joe Louis beat German opponent Max Schmeling in 1938. On the screen, there were joyous scenes in Chicago, in Atlanta’s Ebenezer’s Baptist Church and at Times Square in New York, many holding babies so they could tell them in later life that they had been there.

The memory of the rhetoric of Martin Luther King loomed large, and chimed with the tears of Jesse Jackson in Grant Park in Chicago, shown to millions around the world. A man had been judged by the content of his character, not by the colour of his skin,40 years after the Kerner Commission warned that America was on the verge of becoming two nations, one white, the other black, ‘‘separate and unequal’’.

There was silence in the apartment as John McCain appeared to make his concession speech. It was a powerful, gracious and eloquent address, his finest hour. He had taken control of his campaign. It was too late, but it was noble and necessary, as he belatedly shook off the influence of the flawed strategists who had surrounded him and made amends for his mistake in listening to them as they reneged on the promise that his campaign would, in his own words, be ‘‘decent and honourable’’.

It was not, until he conceded defeat. As his campaign evolved over the past few months, McCain did not follow the advice of Ronald Reagan: ‘‘Whatever else history may say about me, I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears.”

It was Obama who lived out that advice. An excited hush descended as the history-maker took to the stage in Grant Park. It was another stunning performance, with humility and healing the touchstones of his speech. He radiated a confidence but also a sense of the burden he now carries. What was still striking was the focus, confidence and certainty that made so many believe he has the judgement and the intelligence to rescue the country.

The Irish, of course, were the last to leave the party. We made our way back to the hotel at 5am.By 8am, the construction workers in Washington Square were making us pay for our excesses in ‘‘the city that never fucking sleeps’’, as one colleague good-humouredly growled over breakfast. The same person had actually woken at 7am and turned on the television to make sure it had not all been a dream.

Then came the analysis and the questions. Obama’s astonishing 21-month campaign, involving a $600 million war chest, a 50-state strategy, millions of volunteers and the internet, had redrawn the electoral map. The Republican Party had been badly wounded, with its much-vaunted attack machine ground into the dust, and the conservative political culture that drove it defeated.

Unprecedented voter registration was one of the great successes of the Obama strategy, as was the deliberate courting of the youth vote. Six out of ten first-time voters were under the age of 30. One in five was black. More than two-thirds of voters under the age of 30 backed Obama. Early voting had been successful, but only 30 states made provision for it.

Although there was no catastrophic meltdown last Tuesday, there were many tales of voting irregularities, malfunctioning machines and badly-managed polling stations, along with what Time magazine refers to as ‘‘disenfranchisement through typo’’. This occurs when the flawed databases with voters’ details incorrectly entered do not match the voter’s ID. It is astonishing, in the 21st century, that Americans have to queue for hours to vote, and that they have not come up with a more efficient system. Had the election been a closer one, we would have heard a lot more about that issue.

Obama will have no shortage of advice about what he should now do. Many will want him to dispense with the ‘predator state’, as identified by economist James K Galbraith (son of John Kenneth) in his new book of the same title. He asserts: ‘‘Reagan’s economists worshipped the market, but Bush didn’t worship the market. Bush simply turned over regulatory authority to his friends. It enabled all the shady operators and card sharks to come to dominate how we finance.”

In Boston, Harvard political scientist Michael Sandel suggested that ‘‘Obama will have to reinvent government as an instrument of the common good’’ - to regulate markets, protect citizens against the risks of unemployment and illness and invest in energy independence.

But Obama’s success, Sandel noted, was also about a new patriotism: his campaign ‘‘tapped a dormant civil idealism, a hunger among Americans to serve a cause greater than themselves, a yearning to be citizens again’’.

Did November 4, 2008, signal the end of the American Civil War that began in Virginia in 1861, with the same state which once exalted slavery endorsing Obama? That was the assertion of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman the morning after the election. He suggested that the Civil War ‘‘could never truly be said to have ended until America’s white majority actually elected an African-American as president’’.

Is Obama’s task on a par with that of Franklin D Roosevelt, who took office in March 1933 during the Great Depression and spoke with similar self-assurance and hope? Does he have to function almost as a sitting president immediately? Is there such a thing as an ‘‘emotional mandate’’, as suggested by Rachel Maddow on MSNBC? How will he deliver on his promise of bringing bipartisanship to Washington? Will he follow in the footsteps of JFK who, in 1961, appointed Republicans to key cabinet posts? Should he be aggressive or cautious?

These and other questions and decisions will keep Obama preoccupied for the next few weeks. For the rest of America, it is time to take a breather and dwell on the history that has been made before getting back to the reality of recession, Iraq, climate change, immigration reform and health insurance. Obama will need all the political capital and goodwill that he brilliantly, deservedly and historically earned last week.

Diarmaid Ferriter is Professor of Modern Irish History at UCD, and Burns Scholar at Boston College

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