TMP Online

Is Obama all spin and no substance asks Tim Caswell.

Barack Obama is a charismatic, eloquent, possibly even sincere, pretender to the United States’ Presidential throne who lacks gravitas and policies. Support for this proposition can be found in every newspaper in the English language. There is a technical term for the journalists who write such drivel - “lazy Idiots.”

They are mostly the same people who told us simultaneously that Tony Blair would do anything to appease public opinion then criticised him for defying half the population to fight fascism in Iraq or prevent ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Kosovo. Apparently Blair stood for nothing but changed the Labour Party fundamentally. I can think of one or 50 Labour MP’s who will appreciate him a little more when they sign on the dole for the first time in May 2010 (Things are too bad for my last prediction of a June 2009 General Election to be credible now, although Gordon may have another dither in the autumn next year).

Journalists able to read and operate a keyboard could discover in a few minutes on the Internet that Obama is the only candidate pledging to withdraw all combat Brigades from Iraq within sixteen months of taking office. For fans of detail this will commence 60 days after he takes office and progress at a rate of two Brigades each month. His Health Care plan may be of interest to the 47 million Americans without access to health care even though 9 million of them are too young to vote.

His detailed plan to reduce carbon emissions by eighty percent in the only country in the world with a hole in the ozone layer is ignored as if it were a mere reiteration of an all party consensus. One almost wonders why George Bush and his oil baron paymasters refused to sign the less ambitious Kyoto Treaty.
Promises and policies are easy of course but we all know Obama has no principles or if he does, they must be a closely guarded secret withheld from the world’s press. Good news - the secret is out. All has been revealed between the covers of his book, “The Audacity of Hope – My thoughts on reclaiming the American Dream.”

I cried twice when I read it; once for joy at its lucidity and simple exposition of a philosophy that should be tattooed inside the eyelids of every Social Democrat and Liberal in the world. On a single page Obama links the need to be eternally vigilant in defence of Liberty (after Hobbs, Locke and John Stuart Mill), warns that belief in infallibility leads to the “gulag or the Jihad” (after Karl Popper who thought political dogma was always a short goosestep from a gas chamber) then he mentions the enlightenment.

The second time I cried it was in despair at the ignorance of people who have been walking past his book in Waterstones for several years before denouncing him as lightweight in the allegedly quality newspapers they write for.

But the real indictment is that he is not supported by black people. This must be true; Panorama ran a whole programme on it giving the Revs Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson the chance to vent what religious folks call “doubts.” We were left in no doubt by this pair that our boy was, at best, a coconut and, at worst, an Uncle Tom. Unfortunately for these tribunes of African America, the 90% of Black and Hispanic people who voted for Obama in some primaries obviously don’t watch Panorama. That just leaves the racists and the, “A Liberal can’t win.” merchants who will be dismayed by recent opinion polls showing Mc Cain trailing behind Obama.

Someone asked me recently. “Will Barack Obama be a disappointment?” “Of course”, I replied, “all politicians are disappointments.” As everyone who phones Talk Sport radio knows, running a family is really hard but running a country is easy, so running the free world must be a doddle. Such people are easily disappointed.
Sober reflection might lead one to conclude that Nelson Mandela did not fullfill every promise the African National Congress made during the struggle but most people preferred his “warts an’ all” People’s Republic to P W Botha’s Apartheid. Unlike Mr. Jackson and Mr. Sharpton, Mr Mandela supports Barak Obama and I think he may have a point.

Even disappointing Presidents leave a legacy. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was sleazier than Bill Clinton and his father was thrown out of Britain for supporting the Nazis, leaving his brother Robert to nurture the few real principles the family had.

But visit Runnymeade and read JFK’s words in defence of internationalism and freedom from his inaugural address on the stone that marks the acre of England given to the America people in his memory, and you are reminded why old men like John Kenneth Galbraith described the Kennedy administration as like “Camelot” (The Court of King Arthur not the lottery).

Barack Obama rejected religious domination of politics in a speech last year which has been compared to John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s declaration of independence from the Vatican in Houston in 1960. The similarity does not end there. Bill and Hillary used to be the comeback kids; when Obama wins the nomination and then The White House, the American dream of the founding fathers, democracy and Camelot will all have made a historic comeback.

Tim Caswell is a Labour Party member of over 30 years standing and a writer. His radio play, Extra Time was produced by the BBC and he has written for the film, Nineliveslondon.