The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

The Fortunate One

Sure, Obama’s lucky. He also relentlessly seizes his chances and makes every one of them count. By Daniel Klaidman

As heart-stricken Republicans tried to explain their unambiguous defeat by Barack Obama, some turned to the heavens. Hurricane Sandy, the explanation went, stopped Mitt Romney’s momentum in its tracks, gave Obama an exquisitely timed commander-in-chief moment, and blacked out media coverage of his opponent for several crucial days.

The hurricane was merely the latest reason to wonder: have the fates been smiling on Barack Obama? It’s hard to look at his stratospheric rise from obscure state senator to leader of the free world in just four years and not think that he might have benefited from a string of extremely good fortune.

True, Obama has faced plenty of obstacles in life. Unlike Mitt Romney, he was not born into great wealth; he is not a member of what Warren Buffett calls the “lucky sperm club.” And his race—not to mention a last name that is easily confused with Osama—undoubtedly hurt him with some voters as he ascended through American politics.

At the same time, think about the political luck that has come Obama’s way in the last year alone: in a race framed around fears of increasing economic inequality, the president drew an opponent who evoked the Monopoly millionaire. While Obama’s admen sought to portray their rival as a hopelessly out-of-touch plutocrat, Romney kept writing their copy. He tried to make a $10,000 bet during a debate, said he was “not concerned about the very poor,” and blithely wrote off 47 percent of the electorate as freeloaders. As he moved to the right to secure the Republican nomination, Romney got tangled up in sexual politics, suggesting that companies could deny women contraception. He offended Hispanics with his hardline stance on immigration. And on the night of the most important speech of his career—his address at the Republican convention—the spotlight was stolen from him by a buffoonish Clint Eastwood.

Then, just as Romney was looking stronger—and more moderate—late in the campaign, Obama got an endorsement from Colin Powell, perhaps the country’s most iconic centrist. As if that wasn’t enough, Hurricane Sandy sparked a politically valuable bromance between the president and Chris Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey. The storm also led to an endorsement from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg—who said that, in Sandy’s wake, he wanted a president who took the problem of climate change seriously.

“Give me generals who know something about tactics and strategy,” said Napoleon Bonaparte, “but best of all give me generals who are lucky.” Was Barack Obama in 2012 simply a lucky general? Or was there something more at work than mere good fortune?

While Obama’s rise through state and national politics was marked by key moments of serendipity, he time and again exhibited a pattern of meticulous planning—laying the groundwork for, and preparing to take full advantage of, whatever good fortune came his way. “What sets the really good politicians apart from the average ones is the ability to recognize opportunities, prepare for it, and capitalize on it,” says Chris Sautter, a longtime political consultant who did early polling for Obama as he was plotting his political ascent.

As a state senator, for instance, Obama made a savvy, forward-thinking move: he managed to get the lines of his district redrawn, pushing its boundaries north into neighborhoods populated by affluent white liberals. By then, he was already eyeing a Senate seat and understood he would need a broader base of support.

In January 2003, Obama jumped into a crowded Democratic-primary race. The leading candidate, multimillionaire Blair Hull, looked like a shoo-in. That was until his divorce papers were unsealed, revealing an allegation that he’d threatened to kill his wife. The revelation was certainly an advantage for Obama—but once it happened, Obama was poised to benefit because of the broad constituency of blacks and wealthy liberals he had begun putting together as a state senator.

In the general election, Obama was pitted against Jack Ryan, a telegenic banker whom many considered the frontrunner. But Ryan’s candidacy imploded when his divorce records were aired publicly. They revealed that Ryan had pressured his wife to accompany him to sex clubs. With Ryan out of the race, Republicans were left with eccentric conservative Alan Keyes. Obama sailed to victory.

Even Obama knew he had been lucky in the campaign. “[T]here was no point in denying my almost spooky good fortune,” he would later write in The Audacity of Hope. “I was an outlier; a freak; to political insiders, my victory proved nothing.”

Before winning the election, Obama had one more bit of serendipity. Aides to John Kerry, who was then the Democratic standard-bearer, reached out to Obama to offer him an invitation to deliver the keynote address at the Democratic convention in Boston. But here again, it was Obama’s assiduous preparation that put him in a position to exploit his good luck. Despite his rich baritone, Obama had not always been a riveting speaker; he was too earnest and wonky. Yet, by the time he ran for the Senate, he’d carefully studied the cadences of black preachers and teamed up with David Axelrod, who counseled him to be a more emotive orator.

For all of Obama’s fortune in drawing weak, scandal-prone opponents, he finally drew the short straw when he ran for the Democratic presidential nomination. Going up against the mighty Clinton machine was a true proving ground. And prevailing was another indication that Obama’s rise represented something more complicated than a freakish alignment of the stars.

Arguably, Obama got lucky again in the general election, when his opponent John McCain looked erratic by suspending his campaign following the collapse of Lehman Brothers. But what may have been politically fortuitous in the short term was a millstone around his neck once he was elected. The economy was losing 700,000 jobs a month, and if Obama didn’t find a way to break the trend, the country was in real danger of falling into a depression.

Yet Obama, who had spent the transition reading biographies of Lincoln and FDR, understood that crises also gave presidents opportunities. So while the sick economy would course through his entire term, obscuring many of his most impressive achievements, he was also laying the foundation for his political salvation.

One of the toughest decisions he had to make early on was whether to bail out Detroit. The country was suffering from sticker shock and simmering over government bailouts. And yet Obama and his advisers understood that letting GM collapse could have led to the loss of as many as a million jobs. What they probably also knew was that the president’s reelection might end up hinging on the northern belt of Ohio, which is heavily dependent on the automobile industry.

In the fall of 2009, Obama was at a low moment in his presidency. Populist rage was exploding over Obamacare and bailouts, fueling the rise of the Tea Party; the president’s poll numbers were plunging to new lows; and the White House was already fearing losing Congress in 2010. According to Jonathan Alter’s The Promise, with another critical health-care vote looming, Rahm Emanuel asked Obama, as the two men sat together in the Oval Office, “Are you feeling lucky, Mr. President?” Without missing a beat the president responded: “My name is Barack Obama, and I’m sitting here. So yeah, I’m feeling pretty lucky.” Six months later, health-care reform passed Congress with the slimmest of margins and no Republican support.

The commando operation that led to the death of Osama bin Laden has been characterized by some as Obama’s greatest stroke of fortune. After all, had it gone awry, it could have been a catastrophe for Obama’s presidency and American morale. But in many ways the raid on Abbottabad, Pakistan, was the classic example of opportunity meeting preparation. First, a strong argument can be made that the chance to get bin Laden only came about because Obama personally reenergized the hunt. Bin Laden’s trail had gone cold, and the Bush administration’s efforts had grown listless. Almost as soon as he came into office, Obama got the word out that finding bin Laden was a top priority. He began pushing his national-security team to come up with creative, new approaches to the manhunt, and once the intelligence community received its first big break, Obama and his team pursued a data-driven review of their options that would have made Romney proud. The final decision to launch the assault was not a cavalier role of the dice; it was a calculated risk backed up by one of the most elaborate and meticulous intelligence operations in American history.

The killing of bin Laden was a stunning military and moral victory for the country. But for Obama, governing at a time of such extreme partisan animus and still coping with a torpid economy, a second term was hardly assured. No president since 1936 had won reelection with unemployment above 7.2 percent. Once again, however, Obama was blessed by the weakness of his rivals. And once again he had the skill to exploit it.

The GOP primary field was a freak show that turned into a circular firing squad, which along the way managed to alienate all of the key constituencies Democrats had put together in their 2008 victory: women, Latinos, and even a healthy portion of the white working class, increasingly embittered by rising economic inequality. Obama made the most of the opportunities presented by this Republican rush to the right. To take one example: when Texas Gov. Rick Perry flared up as a brief challenge, Romney responded by taking a hard line on immigration and adding the infelicitous term “self-deportation” to the political lexicon. Hispanic voters were offended, and Obama savvily took the opportunity to solidify their support by unilaterally pushing through a version of the Dream Act—which halted deportation for as many as a million young, otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants. On Election Day, not surprisingly, Hispanic voters overwhelmingly opted for Obama.

Romney’s most important self-inflicted wound came in the form of the infamous “47 percent” video, in which he wrote off nearly half the electorate as moochers. Uncanny good luck for Obama? Partly. But the president had also carefully prepared to take advantage of this kind of divine intervention. Going back to the earliest days of the campaign, Obama and his political team had decided their best plan of attack against Romney was to paint him as an avatar of the 1 percent, the Thurston Howell of the private-equity business. The tape played right into a narrative that the Obama campaign had already laid down—giving it instant resonance. “It reinforced the whole case they had spent months laying the foundation for,” says David Corn, the Mother Jones reporter who broke the story.

One of the key traits that allows Obama to capitalize on good fortune is his tendency to take the long view of politics. The Colin Powell endorsement is a case in point. The general’s benediction came at the best possible moment, as Obama was trying to build steam heading into the last two weeks of the campaign. In that sense, it may have appeared lucky. But Obama had been consulting with Powell closely throughout his term. The two men met frequently in quiet White House sessions on a wide range of national-security issues, sometimes to the consternation of the Pentagon brass. There are few Washington wise men with whom the president is closer. Powell’s endorsement was likely not in question— only its timing.

As Republicans lick their wounds in the wake of their electoral drubbing, they may be tempted to blame their woes on Obama’s luck. But that would be self-defeating. They’d be better off finding solace in the fact this is the last time they’ll have to run against Barack Obama, a man who is so skilled at both creating and seizing on good fortune. “Obama is a preparation freak,” says one member of his cabinet, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “He makes his own luck.”

Courtesy: Newsweek

November 11, 2012
This government cannot fight corruption

NNPC is a cesspool of corruption

Contrary to the thinking in some places, it is greed, not poverty, which leads to corruption; corruption, in turn, then produces poverty that proves intractable if we try to address it through the distortions caused by corruption itself. Corruption causes its apostles to place self interest above the interest of the whole community, state or country and to become totally confused about the priorities that they should be pursuing in their positions of responsibility and influence.’ Those were the exact words of Ambassador (Dr) Christopher Kolade in his lecture on: POSSESSORS AT THE GATE’ which he gave as Guest Lecturer at the Golden Jubilee anniversary of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile –Ife, on Thursday, 8 November, 2012.

I had actually completed my week’s article a day earlier knowing I had to honour my invitation to that august occasion holding at Ile-Ife but a considerable part of all that had to change after listening to the world acclaimed Management guru and Diplomat. Having finished listening to him, I decided that this article should be more pedagogical than excoriatry. This is not to suggest that corrupt elements in our country do not deserve being thoroughly denounced for the horrors they put us through. It is rather my hope that bringing Dr Kolade’s lecture to the public space will make them see the futlity of their acts and spur some Pauline conversion into probity in them..

Said Dr Kolade: ‘In Nigeria, we possess a land that has been created by Almighty God, and, into which He has poured endowments of such superior quality that its human occupants should have no difficulty accessing the basic requirements for living a reasonably good life. The resources of this nation, he wrote, to which human beings have added very insignificant value, are more than enough to take good care of our true needs and that we can earn the respect of others through our performance rather than by how much wealth we display.’ In his view, ‘as soon as man begins to look for ways of feeding his greed, he enters a territory of discomfort. Whenever man tries to eat more than his system requires; whenever man puts on more clothes than are appropriate for the prevailing weather conditions; if he tries to ride two horses –or drive two vehicles at the same time, his situation becomes unsustainable. Concluding he said: ‘By the same token, trying to acquire more material wealth than one needs merely adds to ones troubles’.

These are the very things our rapacious political elite, especially of the PDP clan, and those they use to perpetrate and safeguard corruption in this country do not seem to appreciate.

Those trying to rubbish the Ribadu committee report, and who egregiously insulted the President to his face, confident they are above official rebuke, are to that Task Force, exactly what the one before them is to the House Report on the oil subsidy scam. They are nothing but mere quislings and lackeys of the Jonathan government but it still must come as a great surprise that otherwise respectable persons, who have chalked up truly distinguished service to the nation, could permit their integrity to be so easily roasted. Nothing confirms their slave assignment more than the claim by Dr Doyin Okupe, the President’s spokesperson, that the report required full assent of all members –confirming that subterranean reports of goings on in the committee were being passed on to the presidency. His statement to the effect ‘that the committee needed to have some clarifications and due process from the originating ministry’ and the minister’s confirmation that she has set up a committee to reconcile the committee’s perspectives with that of a guy who did not attend the committee meetings for any length of time, merely confirms A C N’s early fears that the government was only shopping for men of integrity to leverage on in their so-called anti-corruption efforts. But one should have thought they knew Ribadu better.

Given how effectively the Ribadu report shriveled the integrity of both the government and that of PDP as a party, the co-ordinated attempt to rubbish the report should not come as a surprise. Nigerians have come to know that under their watch, i.e, since 2001 up to 2011, the country has lost about N16 trillion and that the Petroleum Minister,at her whim and caprice, but like some before her, awards oil blocks without due process. No wonder the U.S Council on Foreign Relations says the PDP lives and thrives solely on rentiering from the oil and gas sector. With the country’s entire security apparatti fully under its authority, and, plus additional muscle from erstwhile militants, daily oil theft, says the report, has now reached an alarming rate. This must be the height of any government’s incompetence. Without a doubt, if the forever smart Petroleum Minister was so keen on appointing those two members to the highly lucrative membership of the NNPC board, why was it so hard for her and the President to insist that they both resign their membership of the Ribadu Committee? After all, this is a committee they both tout as important, even strategic, to reforming the oil and gas industry. At the rate this government recruits otherwise well regarded individuals to their ineffectual, anti-corruption feints, only to attempt to mess them up, there will come a time soon when fewer numbers of men and women of integrity will be available for use in these their serpentine schemes

Truth be told, and Ledum Mitee, Chairman of the NIETI has since confirmed this, President Jonathan actually did not need a Ribadu Task Force to tell him he sits atop the most corrupt phase in the entire life of the NNPC. And without a doubt, I make bold to say that it is a consequence of his contesting the 2011 Presidential election which he ought not to have dared given that he participated in the discussions/ meetings at which his party, the PDP, approved rotational presidency. That precisely is the juncture at which corruption took over in the country. I am not by this suggesting that he introduced corruption; far from it, but given the enormous cost at which his victory was secured, it became obvious there must be a pay back time. And the election financiers have remained totally unrelenting. After all, nothing goes for nothing. They will not stop until they bankrupt this government or liquidate the nation itself. They are behind the oil subsidy scam just as they will be ready to do anything to vitiate any Jonathan attempt to sanitise the oil industry, in particular. There is currently the notorious case of a company, presumably not registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission, but which allegedly got paid oil subsidy in two tranches with its name conspicuously left unannounced to the Nigerian public. It was also the same reason the President gave Nigerians the ungodly, 2012, New Year gift of removing the so-called oil subsidy with all the attendant consequences on the citizenry.

Report after report has shown that the NNPC is nothing but a cesspool of corruption and long before the Ribadu report, NEITI, a statutory body authorized to conduct forensic audits of the Nigerian oil and gas industry, has laid bare the stinking organisation that goes by that name. For instance, between 1999-2008, it conducted three cycles of forensic audits each of which showed gross debauchery but because PDP is all about rub my back, I rub yours, nothing came out of those reports to conduct which so much money must have been expended. NEITI has reported a loss of $9.8 billion or N1.373 Trillion during that period in recoverable funds which should have been paid into the federation account; yet states are languishing for lack of much needed funds. Or to what extent can a state tax its impoverished citizenry in search of enhanced IGR?

To conclude in the words of Dr Kolade,’ if these leaders will see themselves as gatekeepers –custodians, not only of our material fortunes, but, more importantly, as guardians of our values and standards’, it should be possible for them to rethink their predatory and acquisitive nature which includes storing riches for their unborn generations, like the biblical fool, not knowing who, in the end, will inherit it. And in the words of Pastor E.A. Adeboye, they should better know that all these – their wealth and possessions – are worth nothing to God and should therefore change unless they want to head to eternal fire..

November 11, 2012
’Aso Ebi’ for Obama

Lest I forget, we have to mark this victory of our ‘son’ who has been given another shot to lead the world in a big way during his inauguration in January. Towards this, we have organised a lot of activities, including performances by different masquerades that will entertain at the occasion. The fuel subsidy thieves and the beneficiaries of the scam are not left out as they are expected to cough up part of their ill-gotten wealth that our government has the wisdom but lacks the courage to collect from them.

Yours sincerely is in close contact with President Obama’s kith and kin in Kenya and I can authoritatively tell you that I have the mandate as their sole representative in Nigeria to collect money for the ‘Aso Ebi’ (identical dress). If you are interested (as I guess you must be), please send the money ($500 only) for the dress to this account: Bank 419, account name: Pro-Fraud Monsters, account number 000419. Limited stock available; so pay now to avoid the last minute rush! Only those wearing the ‘Aso Ebi’ will be admitted into the venue of the inauguration. And, please, don’t allow yourself to be conned; ignore others who may purport to be rendering the same selfless service for ‘our son’. Yours sincerely is the only accredited person given that franchise in Nigeria. See you there!

November 11, 2012
Obama as Uber-man

The superman finally came to the American supermarket this past week. It is the rise of Uber-Man, a human phenomenon that transcends race, class and religion. Please permit the special coinage, a conflation of German and English. The Uber-Man is a superhuman being , but not in the classical German sense. It is an ordinary man who rose to extraordinary heights by capturing the moral imagination and better aspirations of his society.

There is something infinitely satisfying when good people finish first. It reaffirms our hope in the essential goodness of humanity and the possibility of human redemption. It speaks to the possibilities of paradise on earth, a quest which has resulted in much revolutionary strife and bloodletting in human history. In the permanent struggle between the good man of Rousseau and the cynical skeptic of Voltaire; between the wise savant of Obatala and the hardy warlord of Ogun, it is always reassuring to see Homo sapiens on the rise.

In every human society, there are forces for good and forces for evil. In the perpetual struggle between agents of darkness and servants of light, much depends on the structural and ethical configuration of the society. There are nations and there are nations. Some nations are structurally configured for the ascendancy of brute force and brutish amoral characters. These are the hell-holes on earth whose denizens are serving out some divine interdiction. It is always good to see a nation put its better foot forward, to see the collective good reassert itself. Goodliness is next to godliness.

To be sure, America is not a perfect society. No human society is as yet a perfect society. It is always wise to have a sense of perspective. When people make noise about America’s unenviable and unflattering past, all they need to do is to compare it with other societies, particularly theirs. Humankind is not a fallen angel but a rising ape. As Walter Benjamin famously puts it, there is no record of civilization which is not at the same time a record of barbarity. From the Egyptian pyramids to the American Pentagon, there is no human monument which is not at the same time a silent tribute to man’s inhumanity to mankind.

The good fortune of America is its capacity for ceaseless self-surpassing and endless self-invention. This is so because America is a nation founded by romantic intellectuals and starry-eyed idealists who believed against overwhelming evidence and their own innate disposition and inner judgement that all people are created equal. Once that benchmark has been fixed, it is left to ordinary and super-ordinary men and women to slug it out and slog towards the ideal. What a struggle that has been in America in the last three hundred years, from the civil war to civil rights protests.

These are the epic contentions and the ceaseless fire-fights for emancipation and freedom that have culminated in the Obama revolution. It was a close run thing. America is still bitterly divided and fractured along critical fault lines. For a moment, Obama himself appeared to have stumbled and faltered. There were moments when he seemed to have lost the script altogether. But he never lost his decency, his compassion for the disadvantaged, his unfailing politeness and courteousness and the extraordinary courage in face of adversity that has defined his life.

Had Obama gone under in the face of a determined onslaught, it would have been a cruel unraveling. Had the revolution been abridged, it would have been a great loss to America and humanity at large. The minimal strides of America towards a just and fairer society would have suffered a terrible set back. The forces of rightwing reaction were already celebrating before they succumbed to a stinging sucker punch.

The good thing about electoral revolutions is that they flow from the ballot and not the bullet; and they tend to unite society rather than divide it. Obama was elected not because he was a Black person, but in spite of that fact. The Black alone could not have elected him. It was a pan-racial, pan-class and pan-religious affair. It was the triumph of the good American. It was victory for the Uber-man as represented by Obama.

It would be foolish and presumptuous in the extreme to assume that under Barack Obama, America has suddenly become a fairer and more egalitarian society, or that it has lost its warrior-state mantra. The dogged pursuit and swift execution of Osama bin Laden is an awesome display of the bloody-minded and chilling resolve of a super-security state. But there is a conscious movement in the right direction. This is the lesson for all fractured societies and nations. Thye next four years should be interesting, that is if Obama survives a possible violent backlash from the loony right. We congratulate America and the Americans.

November 11, 2012
Looks like the best is long since gone

People, our glorious past is clearly behind us and nothing but a glorious chaos stands before us

One of the best things about looking over your shoulders is that it helps you measure your next step in relation to your previous one. If the previous steps have been too small, you can gently coax and persuade your feet to please take larger size steps so you can get to your neighbour’s yard before nightfall. If, as happens to most of us, the feet appear to be going faster than the brain, then you find yourself again gently persuading your feet to go, shall we say, a little slower so that you don’t find yourself ‘putting your feet in it’ too much. That’s when a husband goes at the wife: ‘Did I ask you to write to the president about my financial troubles?’ ‘Did you have to proclaim to the whole world that I was having financial troubles?’ ‘Did I even tell you that I was having financial troubles just because your house keeping money is short by a few miserable thousands? You this woman, be careful yourself o; don’t be putting your foot in your mouth o!’

I am aware though that most people who have to look over their shoulder do so because there is someone aiming an invisible rifle at them and they don’t know which of their fat shadows that rifle is going to shoot at. And it’s mostly because they have done something wrong, such as performing illegal clones of themselves, their girlfriends or their spouses. Or, it may be because they stole some meat from the soup pot. No, I’m joking. Mostly, it is because they probably stole some meat from the soup-pot.

When we in Nigeria look over our shoulder, we are not looking out for any rifles (those come from within) nor are we looking out for how not to put our feet in it. No, none of that. We look over our shoulder in nostalgia at the age of our innocence. The age of our innocence was the age when we all believed that we had a country, a place we could call our own, a place where no one in particular felt out of place. It was a place that accommodated everyone’s names within its walls without flinching. It was also a place where one’s brawns, mixed with a little brain, got one a good living off the land.

Then, there was no creed, no religion, no race that was looked down on. I remember growing up in a vigorous Kaduna in the swinging sixties with every tribe and religion in Nigeria represented on my street and with very little consciousness of the differences between us. Indeed, those differences were for referential purposes only. Now, it appears that Kaduna has become a hotbed of a one-sided religious passion and fervour, a place where people are regularly killed in the name of God. From my recent visit to the city, I could see that the place has indeed grown, physically. However, there was a sombreness to it that could not be shaken off as my guide pointed out the areas that I used to know so well, buildings old and buildings new, all of which were there but now wearing colours of great unease. This is the new Nigeria. Yes, I saw that too, the New Nigerian Newspaper (NNN) building where I had some teeth cut in writing and reporting in many months of training. It was just sitting there where it had always been, but now forlorn, the building that is, not my teeth. Gone was its vibrancy.

Barack Obama’s recent second victory acceptance speech titled ‘The Best is yet to come…’ includes the following:

I believe we can keep the promise of our founders, the idea that if you’re willing to work hard, it doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from or what you look like or where you live. It doesn’t matter whether you’re black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or old or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight, you can make it here in America if you’re willing to try.

I want to believe the forefathers of the Nigerian state also had something vaguely resembling this in mind. I think they sort of hoped that you and I, wherever you may be reading this, may be able to stand anywhere, shoulder to shoulder across our various divides, doing our best to raise this country up from its supine position. In this venture, what should count are the things which will not let anyone down in moments of stress. No, not a rich parent, no; it is character and skill. These were the things which marked our glorious past, the things we now peep at over our shoulders hoping that somehow they would once again catch up with us and even catapult themselves right into our present and future like magic.

Sadly, our present is riddled with an insatiable craze for money that has every one of us tearing our hairs and eyes out as we aim for each other’s jugular. The civil servant preys on the innocent populace, the teachers on their hapless students, the traders and businessmen on their buying public and the police and politicians on the entire country. Believe me, you cannot get a more disorganised food chain than this, certainly not what God had in mind, but who am I to complain. Good thing is, we are all partakers of the results of this penkelemesi. Daily, I find that I have to weave through all the barracudas to get a few comforts. Thanks very much; I get by with prayers and fasting. But it gets worse; Masters and Ph. D holders are even now seeking to become drivers in Dangote’s firm. Ha!

Now, that is just something, isn’t it, when intellectuals are vying for positions that require lower-level skills. But these strange goings-on are not altogether new, are they? They have been happening for a long time. It’s just that they seem to be getting stranger by the day. First, we had military rule. Ideally, the security is supposed to bring up the rear in any organisation. But here we were, rear-ended and up-ended, we stood on our heads with our feet in the air for so long we learnt to stop thinking. For one thing, we were even afraid to think lest we be arrested for that treacherous exercise.

Then we had marauders called politicians, who looked like they had been trained by the devil himself, take over the reins of the nation’s politics. Since they came, they have not only been looting, they have been mauling the country’s spirit, norms and ethics to bits and pieces, going at the tearing like maniacs. For one thing, they wake up from their nationally sponsored slumber only when they hear money mentioned. For another, they have succeeded in planting the seeds of tribal and religious bigotry deep within each of us so much so that everywhere you go, you are required to state clearly where on earth you come from and what creed you belong to. It is not enough that you are simply called a Nigerian. There used to be the Nigerian, now there is just a northerner, a south-easterner or a south-westerner.

People, our glorious past is clearly behind us and before us stands nothing but glorious chaos. Every group is now engaged in battering the other, propelled by fears and primitive, destructive or acquisitive instincts or all. No nation can survive on that. It is only when a people’s fears lead it to a more altruistic collaboration that it can get understanding. With understanding will come individual and collective wisdom which can lead the group out of the path of destruction into the realm of statehood.

November 11, 2012
Falling for Obama

We should learn from his election

We have fallen for Obama, again. We might as well admit it. The man makes our hearts go pitter-patter. He did it on Super Tuesday when the United States of America, a country brimming with over 300m people, went to the polls and re-elected him. Barack Obama softened us all up that day, just as he did when he made history four years ago, sending us into a swoon.

Late 2008 when he was first elected the name ‘Obama’ was on most Nigerians’ lips. We mouthed it everywhere. It boomed in the marketplace, echoed in the barber’s shop, reverberated in the offices. The bus driver knew it and, in some cases, even had it painted on his vehicle. Back then I feared we might also print Obama’s face on our textile materials. Some rich and influential people in our midst ate dinner over the name, even claiming to raise funds on its owner’s behalf, an assertion from which the Obama organisation distanced itself.

Congratulatory messages poured out from everywhere. Our president hailed him. Our senators praised him. The House reps expressed their adoration. The entire nation fell for him.

It was not for nothing. Obama was not just the first African-American to preside over the affairs of the most powerful nation on earth; he was also the first first-generation African-Americans to do so. His father was a Kenyan and died as one. So Obama achieved what many thought was impossible. He lifted our spirits. The smart politician that he is, Obama did not campaign on racial lines but when he spoke of hope in 2008, the African-American community also understood it to mean there was hope for them. So did the Nigerian, and indeed, the African everywhere. If Obama could aspire to such heights, so could we. If Obama could win, so could we. The man of magic renewed hope, and we could not help but say, or at least, feel ‘we can’.

Last week, Obama did it again, besting his hard-fighting Republican challenger Mitt Romney. He sent us all to cloud nine, again, even though much of the hope he spoke about four years ago had slipped away with lost jobs. We were relieved when he rallied to win one of the tightest presidential races in memory with a comfortable margin, after sliding in the poll ratings following a disappointing performance in the crucial first debate with Romney. As he was re-elected, Nigerians were congratulating one another as though the winner were of Igbo, Yoruba or Hausa ancestry or of any of our tribes. President Goodluck Jonathan has since fired off a congratulatory message, as have our lawmakers. Other leaders have waxed lyrical, praising the system that produced last week’s election and our own Obama as president. One of them wished we could have that sort of election soon.

Even in defeat Romney proved no less a leader. He looked forward to a new and better America under Obama. He not only showed much respect for the man who frustrated his attempt to rule America but also said he would pray for the success of the re-elected president. That was impressive.

Obama was unmatchable in his victory speech, proving that words are as much a crucial aspect of great leadership as is action. He praised not just the man who nearly denied him a second term but also the man’s family which produced Romney’s father, who after serving as Michigan governor also ran for the presidency himself. Obama saluted the Romney family for their public service to the American people. The president praised his campaign organisation with enough words and, later tears, to inspire them the way money could not. To his workers he showed respect; to his wife and family love.

From the eyes of his country men and women he drew tears of powerful, positive emotions when he told them the task of perfecting their union was moving forward. He spoke of the larger American family which rose from “war and depression” to the “heights of hope” and of a people free to “pursue our individual dreams”. He praised the voters, whether they voted for or against him. He reminded Americans that it is not their wealth that makes them rich, nor do they derive their strength from the country’s superior military. Obama said their much sought-after universities and cultures do not make Americans exceptional. What does, he told them, is their bond.

As he spoke, sustained cheers forced him to pause.

Obama urged his people to be stubborn in hope even when situations nudged them to give up. He dismissed politics as sometimes divisive, as we all saw in his famous duel with Romney, who got more white votes than he did. Obama rallied his compatriots, calling their country the greatest on earth.

They lapped it all up. And so did we, outsiders. We loved his speech prowess, probably even envied the ability of a fellow black to carry along such a consequential country. For different reasons we fell for Obama.

But what use is falling for him if we cannot learn from him? Will our politics ever produce respect among our politicians? Without aping Obama in speech, can our leaders truly rally our people with words even when action fails them? Obama said the best was yet to come for Americans. Is our best also yet to come or is it behind us?

November 11, 2012
Nigeria on my mind as Americans voted

US election shows we still have a long way to go

Nigeria was on my mind when the Americans went to the polls on November 6 to elect a new president. Of course, I had expected the election to be peaceful and devoid of deployment of any troops. Of course too, I had no doubt that a winner was going to emerge without much rancour unlike what we have here in Nigeria. Of course I had also not expected the Americans to contest the outcome of the polls; the winner being magnanimous in victory even as the loser was expected to accept his fate with equanimity, realising that there is always a next time. This is of course because they see the process as free and transparent.

All these came to pass by the time a winner was emerging Tuesday night, when results from areas that mattered most had been declared, such that it was mere formality by the time the entire results came in. Incumbent President Barack Obama of the Democratic Party trounced his challenger, Mitt Romney of the Republican Party by 60,782,354 votes (50.4 percent) to Romney’s 57,884,882 (48 percent). Obama also floored Romney at the Electoral College with 303 votes against Romney’s 206. All Obama needed was 270 of the 538 Electoral College votes and by the time he had crossed the 270 votes mark, it was clear he was the winner of the election, even though his popular votes were as at then less than that of Romney.

This was a thing that unsettled people like Donald Trump, a well-known Obama hater who called the election process a ‘disaster for democracy’. “This election is a total sham and a travesty. We are not a democracy!” he tweeted. Trump called for a revolution. “More votes equals a loss…revolution!” Trump said in another tweet. Trump represented the typical American business interest but he knew the limits of his frustration as he reportedly deleted his angry reaction from Tweeters.

I am sure many of our top politicians watched the proceedings from the comfort of their mansions, courtesy of the CNN, Al Jazeera and other cable networks. The same thing happened in many other countries because America’s presidential election is not an American affair alone; it is a global affair. Everyone was interested in the outcome because it has ramifications not for Americans alone but for the world. For instance, Nigeria has joined other countries in congratulating Obama. This is despite the fact that America has reduced its crude imports from Nigeria by over 700,000 barrels per day. Obama has America uppermost in his mind in whatever policy necessitated this drastic cut in crude imports from Nigeria.

One question that I kept asking myself is what lesson did our politicians learn from the election? This might be a rhetorical question in the sense that that was not the first of such rancour-free, transparent election they ever watched. Although it took some time for Romney himself to come up with his concession speech, the fact is that he still did and his speech was short, sharp and straight to the point. He said he had congratulated the president on his reelection; greeted his (Obama’s) wife, their children and even supporters. You could see in his speech, despite the fact that he lost, that America was also uppermost in his mind. “The nation, as you know, is at a critical point. At a time like this, we can’t risk partisan bickering and political posturing….I so wish – I so wish that I had been able to fulfill your hopes to lead the country in a different direction. But the nation chose another leader. And, so Ann and I join with you to earnestly pray for him and this great nation”, Romney said.

This was an election in which all interested Americans worldwide voted. No one made a fetish of polls as we are wont to do here. And really, what is the big deal in organising elections? Elections become akin to bones in the mouth of old people when there are sinister motives. If people who voted from across the globe were able to collate the results without disputes, how come those of us in Nigeria give all kinds of excuses, like bad terrain, to delay election results? It is in the process of waiting for results from so-called difficult terrains that figures are falsified; that is if the entire results do not get lost on the waters. The current US population is above 300 million and we had slightly over 118milion who voted during the election, representing a turn-out of about 60 per cent of eligible voters. In Nigeria, we are never close to the 118million that voted in that election, yet, we hardly get it right. And that is deliberate. That, too, is the reason why people hardly perform after ‘winning’ elections here.

Now, tell me why Obama would not perform when he knows that he fought a battle of his life to remain in office. In the heat of the electioneering, he joked that he had grown gray hairs in the White House. That is evidence of hard work, it is also a lamentation that he has not been able to do as much as he loved to. How many of our own elected officers have grown such gray hairs for Nigeria? A colleague jocularly said what they grow in Nigeria are pot bellies. That is what leaders who are working hard in the wrong direction (like our own leaders) grow. It is only in a few places that we have such keenly contested election here. Most people just come into office here via election results that had been written long before the polls; all that is required is for the favoured candidate to work to the answer at the polls. Sometimes they are so overzealous about it that they end up having more voters than people registered to vote. And our legal luminaries throw ethics to the dustbins; dust their gowns and prepare for legal contests that end up as no contest after all. Meanwhile, they’ve made their billions!

’Aso Ebi’ for Obama

est I forget, we have to mark this victory of our ‘son’ who has been given another shot to lead the world in a big way during his inauguration in January. Towards this, we have organised a lot of activities, including performances by different masquerades that will entertain at the occasion. The fuel subsidy thieves and the beneficiaries of the scam are not left out as they are expected to cough up part of their ill-gotten wealth that our government has the wisdom but lacks the courage to collect from them.
Yours sincerely is in close contact with President Obama’s kith and kin in Kenya and I can authoritatively tell you that I have the mandate as their sole representative in Nigeria to collect money for the ‘Aso Ebi’ (identical dress). If you are interested (as I guess you must be), please send the money ($500 only) for the dress to this account: Bank 419, account name: Pro-Fraud Monsters, account number 000419. Limited stock available; so pay now to avoid the last minute rush! Only those wearing the ‘Aso Ebi’ will be admitted into the venue of the inauguration. And, please, don’t allow yourself to be conned; ignore others who may purport to be rendering the same selfless service for ‘our son’. Yours sincerely is the only accredited person given that franchise in Nigeria. See you there!

November 11, 2012
The Fortunate One

Sure, Obama’s lucky. He also relentlessly seizes his chances and makes every one of them count. By Daniel Klaidman

As heart-stricken Republicans tried to explain their unambiguous defeat by Barack Obama, some turned to the heavens. Hurricane Sandy, the explanation went, stopped Mitt Romney’s momentum in its tracks, gave Obama an exquisitely timed commander-in-chief moment, and blacked out media coverage of his opponent for several crucial days.

The hurricane was merely the latest reason to wonder: have the fates been smiling on Barack Obama? It’s hard to look at his stratospheric rise from obscure state senator to leader of the free world in just four years and not think that he might have benefited from a string of extremely good fortune.

True, Obama has faced plenty of obstacles in life. Unlike Mitt Romney, he was not born into great wealth; he is not a member of what Warren Buffett calls the “lucky sperm club.” And his race—not to mention a last name that is easily confused with Osama—undoubtedly hurt him with some voters as he ascended through American politics.

At the same time, think about the political luck that has come Obama’s way in the last year alone: in a race framed around fears of increasing economic inequality, the president drew an opponent who evoked the Monopoly millionaire. While Obama’s admen sought to portray their rival as a hopelessly out-of-touch plutocrat, Romney kept writing their copy. He tried to make a $10,000 bet during a debate, said he was “not concerned about the very poor,” and blithely wrote off 47 percent of the electorate as freeloaders. As he moved to the right to secure the Republican nomination, Romney got tangled up in sexual politics, suggesting that companies could deny women contraception. He offended Hispanics with his hardline stance on immigration. And on the night of the most important speech of his career—his address at the Republican convention—the spotlight was stolen from him by a buffoonish Clint Eastwood.

Then, just as Romney was looking stronger—and more moderate—late in the campaign, Obama got an endorsement from Colin Powell, perhaps the country’s most iconic centrist. As if that wasn’t enough, Hurricane Sandy sparked a politically valuable bromance between the president and Chris Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey. The storm also led to an endorsement from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg—who said that, in Sandy’s wake, he wanted a president who took the problem of climate change seriously.

“Give me generals who know something about tactics and strategy,” said Napoleon Bonaparte, “but best of all give me generals who are lucky.” Was Barack Obama in 2012 simply a lucky general? Or was there something more at work than mere good fortune?

While Obama’s rise through state and national politics was marked by key moments of serendipity, he time and again exhibited a pattern of meticulous planning—laying the groundwork for, and preparing to take full advantage of, whatever good fortune came his way. “What sets the really good politicians apart from the average ones is the ability to recognize opportunities, prepare for it, and capitalize on it,” says Chris Sautter, a longtime political consultant who did early polling for Obama as he was plotting his political ascent.

As a state senator, for instance, Obama made a savvy, forward-thinking move: he managed to get the lines of his district redrawn, pushing its boundaries north into neighborhoods populated by affluent white liberals. By then, he was already eyeing a Senate seat and understood he would need a broader base of support.

In January 2003, Obama jumped into a crowded Democratic-primary race. The leading candidate, multimillionaire Blair Hull, looked like a shoo-in. That was until his divorce papers were unsealed, revealing an allegation that he’d threatened to kill his wife. The revelation was certainly an advantage for Obama—but once it happened, Obama was poised to benefit because of the broad constituency of blacks and wealthy liberals he had begun putting together as a state senator.

In the general election, Obama was pitted against Jack Ryan, a telegenic banker whom many considered the frontrunner. But Ryan’s candidacy imploded when his divorce records were aired publicly. They revealed that Ryan had pressured his wife to accompany him to sex clubs. With Ryan out of the race, Republicans were left with eccentric conservative Alan Keyes. Obama sailed to victory.

Even Obama knew he had been lucky in the campaign. “[T]here was no point in denying my almost spooky good fortune,” he would later write in The Audacity of Hope. “I was an outlier; a freak; to political insiders, my victory proved nothing.”

Before winning the election, Obama had one more bit of serendipity. Aides to John Kerry, who was then the Democratic standard-bearer, reached out to Obama to offer him an invitation to deliver the keynote address at the Democratic convention in Boston. But here again, it was Obama’s assiduous preparation that put him in a position to exploit his good luck. Despite his rich baritone, Obama had not always been a riveting speaker; he was too earnest and wonky. Yet, by the time he ran for the Senate, he’d carefully studied the cadences of black preachers and teamed up with David Axelrod, who counseled him to be a more emotive orator.

For all of Obama’s fortune in drawing weak, scandal-prone opponents, he finally drew the short straw when he ran for the Democratic presidential nomination. Going up against the mighty Clinton machine was a true proving ground. And prevailing was another indication that Obama’s rise represented something more complicated than a freakish alignment of the stars.

Arguably, Obama got lucky again in the general election, when his opponent John McCain looked erratic by suspending his campaign following the collapse of Lehman Brothers. But what may have been politically fortuitous in the short term was a millstone around his neck once he was elected. The economy was losing 700,000 jobs a month, and if Obama didn’t find a way to break the trend, the country was in real danger of falling into a depression.

Yet Obama, who had spent the transition reading biographies of Lincoln and FDR, understood that crises also gave presidents opportunities. So while the sick economy would course through his entire term, obscuring many of his most impressive achievements, he was also laying the foundation for his political salvation.

One of the toughest decisions he had to make early on was whether to bail out Detroit. The country was suffering from sticker shock and simmering over government bailouts. And yet Obama and his advisers understood that letting GM collapse could have led to the loss of as many as a million jobs. What they probably also knew was that the president’s reelection might end up hinging on the northern belt of Ohio, which is heavily dependent on the automobile industry.

In the fall of 2009, Obama was at a low moment in his presidency. Populist rage was exploding over Obamacare and bailouts, fueling the rise of the Tea Party; the president’s poll numbers were plunging to new lows; and the White House was already fearing losing Congress in 2010. According to Jonathan Alter’s The Promise, with another critical health-care vote looming, Rahm Emanuel asked Obama, as the two men sat together in the Oval Office, “Are you feeling lucky, Mr. President?” Without missing a beat the president responded: “My name is Barack Obama, and I’m sitting here. So yeah, I’m feeling pretty lucky.” Six months later, health-care reform passed Congress with the slimmest of margins and no Republican support.

The commando operation that led to the death of Osama bin Laden has been characterized by some as Obama’s greatest stroke of fortune. After all, had it gone awry, it could have been a catastrophe for Obama’s presidency and American morale. But in many ways the raid on Abbottabad, Pakistan, was the classic example of opportunity meeting preparation. First, a strong argument can be made that the chance to get bin Laden only came about because Obama personally reenergized the hunt. Bin Laden’s trail had gone cold, and the Bush administration’s efforts had grown listless. Almost as soon as he came into office, Obama got the word out that finding bin Laden was a top priority. He began pushing his national-security team to come up with creative, new approaches to the manhunt, and once the intelligence community received its first big break, Obama and his team pursued a data-driven review of their options that would have made Romney proud. The final decision to launch the assault was not a cavalier role of the dice; it was a calculated risk backed up by one of the most elaborate and meticulous intelligence operations in American history.

The killing of bin Laden was a stunning military and moral victory for the country. But for Obama, governing at a time of such extreme partisan animus and still coping with a torpid economy, a second term was hardly assured. No president since 1936 had won reelection with unemployment above 7.2 percent. Once again, however, Obama was blessed by the weakness of his rivals. And once again he had the skill to exploit it.

The GOP primary field was a freak show that turned into a circular firing squad, which along the way managed to alienate all of the key constituencies Democrats had put together in their 2008 victory: women, Latinos, and even a healthy portion of the white working class, increasingly embittered by rising economic inequality. Obama made the most of the opportunities presented by this Republican rush to the right. To take one example: when Texas Gov. Rick Perry flared up as a brief challenge, Romney responded by taking a hard line on immigration and adding the infelicitous term “self-deportation” to the political lexicon. Hispanic voters were offended, and Obama savvily took the opportunity to solidify their support by unilaterally pushing through a version of the Dream Act—which halted deportation for as many as a million young, otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants. On Election Day, not surprisingly, Hispanic voters overwhelmingly opted for Obama.

Romney’s most important self-inflicted wound came in the form of the infamous “47 percent” video, in which he wrote off nearly half the electorate as moochers. Uncanny good luck for Obama? Partly. But the president had also carefully prepared to take advantage of this kind of divine intervention. Going back to the earliest days of the campaign, Obama and his political team had decided their best plan of attack against Romney was to paint him as an avatar of the 1 percent, the Thurston Howell of the private-equity business. The tape played right into a narrative that the Obama campaign had already laid down—giving it instant resonance. “It reinforced the whole case they had spent months laying the foundation for,” says David Corn, the Mother Jones reporter who broke the story.

One of the key traits that allows Obama to capitalize on good fortune is his tendency to take the long view of politics. The Colin Powell endorsement is a case in point. The general’s benediction came at the best possible moment, as Obama was trying to build steam heading into the last two weeks of the campaign. In that sense, it may have appeared lucky. But Obama had been consulting with Powell closely throughout his term. The two men met frequently in quiet White House sessions on a wide range of national-security issues, sometimes to the consternation of the Pentagon brass. There are few Washington wise men with whom the president is closer. Powell’s endorsement was likely not in question— only its timing.

As Republicans lick their wounds in the wake of their electoral drubbing, they may be tempted to blame their woes on Obama’s luck. But that would be self-defeating. They’d be better off finding solace in the fact this is the last time they’ll have to run against Barack Obama, a man who is so skilled at both creating and seizing on good fortune. “Obama is a preparation freak,” says one member of his cabinet, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “He makes his own luck.”

Courtesy: Newsweek

November 11, 2012
Fairy prince who stole the world

(First published in November, 2008)

Elf-like and exuding supreme confidence and self-assurance, Barack Hussein Obama has seized global imagination by the jugular. In the end, nothing, perhaps, can match the laconic irony of the description of Obama’s spectacular ascension as a fairy tale. A fairy tale combines magic and superstition with savage and exacting reality. Savage because it belongs in the realm of primitive rituals of coronation. Exacting because it is actual history unfolding as a communal fantasy; a spectacle of the tribe. Like a fairy prince, Obama has dangled magical possibilities before the world. Things may never be the same again.

For America, and perhaps the rest of the world, it was a truly defining moment. For comparison, we have to reach back to almost fifty years earlier in 1959 when the dazzling, youthful and charismatic John F. Kennedy was elected president of the United States. It was also a watershed election. America had elected its first catholic president, and a handsome, rich and glamorous one at that. The whole world took note. Camelot was back.

It was always going to be difficult for a man who claimed religious allegiance to the papacy in Rome to become America’s leader and Commander in Chief. Although founded on secular authority, there has always been a deeply religious strain to the American nation anchored on the Puritan and Calvinist ethos of its ancient founding fathers.

But if Kennedy was a victim of intra-elite rivalry and conspiracy, particularly the long face-off between the East coast WASP elite, the Boston Brahmins and the Irish descendants, Obama’s ascendancy was borne on the cusp of a grand assault on the centre from the margins and from below. This is why it resonates more with the wider world than Kennedy’s earlier triumph.

It was a democratic revolution. But it is even better and more ennobling than the real thing. Unlike the typical revolution which pits one class against the other in an orgy of hate and bloodletting, this one demands a unity of purpose that cuts across class, race and creed under a supreme unifying symbol. The American people rose as one against the tormenting excesses of the warrior super-state and its plutocratic tyrants.

Once again, America has shown the way forward for the civilised world. A truly democratic nation can negotiate its way out of any political quagmire. Whatever its imperfections as a nation, America has a unique capacity for ceaseless self-invention. In the process, it often manages to correct the toxic side-effects of its own self-projection and hubristic swaggering. To that extent, the emergence of an Obama-like figure of redemptive possibilities is a historic inevitability.

It may appear curious and even bizarre that the same nation that voted for George Bush junior twice is also the nation that rooted for Obama’s more transformational leadership qualities. The irony of it all is that without the younger Bush, there would have been no Obama presidency at this point at least. America needed a man of spontaneous mayhem and clueless briskness like George Bush to drive the super-security state to the extreme of its unilateralist logic and the summit of its murderous ferocity before it can come to its senses. For any nation founded on rational principles, nothing concentrates the mind more than looming political disaster and fiscal anarchy.

Yet in fairness to George Bush and much as we may rant and rail against him, much as low as his popular stock may have fallen, it is useful to remember that he did not create the American warrior-state. He merely inherited it. The American super-security state was ironically the creation of starry-eyed intellectuals with an exaggerated and romantic notion of America and its place in the world. Obama should take note. As it has been convincingly advanced by David Halberstam in his classic, the best and the brightest of America’s political establishment pushed the nation in the direction of permanent and perpetual war-mongering.

Unfortunately, America was not founded on a warrior’s code or by a warrior caste. America was founded by starry-eyed intellectuals who wanted to create the world anew based on the ideals of freedom, liberty and equality. But just as the much-rhapsodised Athenian democracy was based on a slave-holding economy, equally brutal realities underpinned the American project. These are the realities of slave-holding and the brutal expropriation of the original owners of the land.

Famously, L’Ouverture Toussaint, the great black revolutionist and Haitian hero, had cautioned his French persecutors not to replace the aristocracy of class they had overthrown with an aristocracy of race. It was a lesson lost on the American founding fathers, and it was to lead directly to a civil war and decades of civil strife. It was to lead eventually to the Obama presidency and the historic denouement of November, 2008. Every inch gained, every elbow room created as the heroic civil rights campaigners slogged their way through the obdurate detritus of the American political establishment was to provide the incremental building block for the Obama presidency.

But as it is said, men make history but not under the circumstances of their choice. In one of history’s great ironies when the hour eventually dawned for an African American president of the US, the honour fell on the son of an African who had come to the country of his own will and volition and not on a descendant of enslaved Africans. The cunning of history indeed.

Perhaps if Obama had grown up in a ghetto or one of the feral downtown slums of urban America, he would have been consumed by implacable hatred and bitterness, his self-confidence and self-belief hobbled, his spirit dampened, his radical optimism and appetite for glory sullied, and his infectious enthusiasm destroyed. It is also possible that he would have been picked up by the radar as an intelligent but subversive trouble maker and effectively demobilised.

It is to the eternal credit of the system, to Obama’s own Olympian fortitude and self-belief and his lucky insertion into the system as the much adored and adorable grandson of doting white upper middle class grandparents that the president-elect of America survived unscathed. The audacity of hope is premised on the hope of audacity that all will be well. In another milieu after being repeatedly clobbered audacity will disappear and hope will diminish, leaving in their wake the sheer hopelessness of audacity.

Let us leave things to a footballing trope. In an infamous gloss on Diego Maradona’s audacious run through the entire English defence which culminated in Argentina’s second goal in the 1986 World Cup, Maldini, one of the hard men of the remarkable Italian national team of the early eighties, noted tersely that if Maradona had begun that run in an Italian Football league he would surely have ended it in a hospital.

It is impossible to imagine an Obama surviving in the continent of his father. There would have been a long queue for his head that is if he doesn’t succumb to “friendly” fire. It has proved easier to send a Luo to the White House than to the presidential castle in Nairobi. This is why one finds it so strange and bizarre that some of the shameless autocrats who have turned Africa into an undemocratic hell-hole have been falling over themselves to hail the Obama phenomenon.

It is too early in the day to affirm that Obama would make a great president. The odds are greatly in his favour. Old Abe Lincoln who was both a great man and a great president had his character steeled in the furnace of unrelenting adversity and repeated failures. Obama has emerged relatively unscathed and closeted from the buffeting gale of human perversity. Hence a tendency to overconfidence and hubris. This is the twin-disease of the American nation itself and we can see how in both nation and latest political hero, they are a source of profound strength as well as potential disaster.

Nothing, however, can discount from the profoundly symbolic nature of Obama’s victory. The victory has redrawn the race map of America forever and shattered its stratified hierarchies. After the horrors of Vietnam, Mogadishu, Iraq, Bosnia and Kigali, it feels good to be a human being again. After wandering in the jungle for almost three hundred years, America has finally reconnected with the dream of its founding fathers who were themselves torn between harsh reality and idealistic posturing. It takes a true dreamer and an exceptional individual to unite the entire world in Graceland. It is a magical moment and the magician is of African extraction. Something new always comes out of Africa indeed.

November 11, 2012
Can Justin Welby save Anglican Communion?

It’s a familiar story of privilege in Britain: a well-connected man receives a top-notch, prestigious education before making his name in the high-paying business sector and is eventually selected to fill one of the most prominent roles in British society. But this version of the story has a twist: the man in question, Justin Welby, quit the life of a business executive in 1987 and became a village parish priest in the Church of England instead—and in remarkably short order has risen to be on the verge of being officially named the Archbishop of Canterbury, the spiritual leader of 80 million Anglicans around the world.

After weeks of speculation from the British media and Anglicans around the world, Downing Street announced Friday on Twitter that a group of clergy and lay people known as the Crown Nominations Committee (CNC) had chosen the 56-year-old to be the head of the Church of England. Beyond his background in business, Welby may seem like a surprising choice for the top job for other reasons. Although he was rumored to be a possibility for the leadership of the Church in September when the 16-member CNC met in a secret location to deliberate on their choices, many felt that he was too young and new to the Church. A bit “undercooked”, as Reverend George Pitcher put it when speaking to TIME before the selection was announced. A bishop for less than a year, Welby’s background seems more in line with that of a top political advisor or a flashy CEO rather than the spiritual guide to millions.

Born in London in 1956, Welby has always had well-heeled connections. His father, Gavin Welby, worked as a bootlegger in the United States in the 1920s, was friendly with the Kennedys and once dated the actress Vanessa Redgrave. His mother, Jane Portal Welby, once worked as a secretary for Winston Churchill. Welby was educated at Eton College, the same elite private boys school attended by Princes William and Harry, London Mayor Boris Johnson and 19 British Prime Ministers including the current incumbent David Cameron. He went on to study law and economic history at Cambridge University before starting a career in the oil industry, first on the international finance team for a French oil company in Paris and then as an executive for Enterprise Oil Plc in London. In 1979, he married his wife Caroline and they started a family.

But Welby’s career path took a sharp pivot after the death of his baby daughter Johanna, who was killed in a car accident in France in 1983. Though devastated by the loss, Welby later said, “in a strange way it actually brought [my wife and I] closer to God.” A few years later, Welby quit his job and enrolled at St. John’s College at Durham University to study theology and become a priest. He quickly climbed the ranks of the Church and was appointed the Bishop of Durham—the fourth most senior bishop in the Church of England— in November 2012. His appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury marks another huge promotion—but it’s an elevation to a post that promises to be extremely challenging.

Worldwide, the Anglican community is made up of dozens of different churches, each with their own autonomy. More than half of all Anglicans are members of conservative African churches. In the U.S., the Episcopal Church has only about two million members and an outlook markedly more liberal than their African co-religionists. On issues such as gay marriage, women bishops and even the economy, Anglican churches can seem as far apart from each other in their beliefs as they are geographically. The diverse network of churches is, however, unified through the Communion, which, for the last ten years, has been led by the liberal-minded Rowan Williams, who announced his resignation as Archbishop earlier this year after a decade of struggling to resolve clashes within his flock.

It will now be up to Welby to manage the Church’s conflicts, the most severe of which have sometimes threatened to cause schisms. Many in the Church fear that a move too far to the right or too far to the left by one faction of Anglicans could lead to another faction breaking away entirely. Conservative Anglican groups such as the Convention of Anglicans in North America (CANA) are adamantly opposed to views they feel are contrary to the teachings of the gospels—particularly gay marriage and ordaining women as bishops. Julian Dobbs, a Bishop of CANA, says that such conflicts over theology are “causing huge divisions in the Anglican Communion.” He adds that to prevent irreparable divides, Welby “will need to work hard to establish those historic faith principles that the communion was founded.”

On the other side of the debate are Anglicans who believe that such a move toward codifying the Anglican faith would be at odds with what the Church fundamentally stands for. “Trying to force us into a common belief system is contrary to being an Anglican,” says Pitcher.

Welby clearly has daunting task ahead, but many feel that if anyone is capable of uniting the liberal and conservative factions of the Communion, it’s him. Church insiders describe Welby as a people-person who’s skilled at seeing all sides of an issue and negotiating with both wings of the Church. He’s also traveled extensively in Africa and worked behind the scenes with many churches there, encouraging communication between them and more liberal churches in the West.

That’s not to say he hasn’t taken stands on certain issues. Welby is on the record as being in favor of ordaining women as bishops and he’s just as outspokenly opposed to gay marriage. And yet he has largely managed to avoid being characterized as either of the right or the left in the Church’s political spectrum. In business and as a leader in the Church, Welby is perhaps most commonly described as a mediator. Vivian Gibney, a former colleague of Welby’s, told the BBC that “one of his main strengths is to find the way forward in negotiation.”

Never mind the elite education and business-savvy; that’s the skill most likely to make Welby the Communion’s saving grace.

Courtesy: TIME

November 11, 2012