Who is Obama ?

During the presidential election, the republicans ran a campaign asking " who is the real Obama"? It was a curious question given that Obama had written an autobiography at the age of 35 and another laying out his political philosophy a decade later. Both were works of incredible power and beauty in their lyricism, their integrity and their openness. Anyone seeking to understand who Obama is needs to start with these two books - " Dreams from my father" and " The audacity of hope" because it reveals him in his own words.

Yet as he takes office as the President of the USA, it would be useful to examine what he will do as president.One observer-- Andrew Sullivan-- has an astute summary that I find very convincing..

"……Obama has an old soul’s perspective and an intellectually secure man’s confidence. From the shallow brittleness of George W Bush to the supple strength of Obama is a revolution in temperament and style not seen since Jimmy Carter gave way to Ronald Reagan 28 years ago. It signals the kind of administration that now looms before us: a conciliatory, inclusive, pragmatic form of liberalism. It is a liberalism eager to learn from the insights of conservatives, and it is pioneered by a president-elect shrewd enough to know that generosity of spirit means more leverage and influence, not less. ..The goal, it now seems clear, is what some deduced many months ago: Obama wants to become the leader of an American version of the national governments that Britain relied on in the depths of the last Great Depression.

Take a few largely symbolic things that Obama has done since November 4. He gave his chief rival and fierce competitor, Hillary Clinton, the biggest job in his government. He reached out to John McCain, his opponent in the autumn campaign, and will hold a dinner in McCain’s honor soon. He asked a powerful evangelical voice, Rick Warren, to give the inaugural invocation. Last week he dined with a group of Republican columnists who endorsed his opponent. .. At the Pentagon, Obama has asked Bush’s appointee, Robert Gates, to stay on. He asked Mark Dybul, Bush’s only openly gay appointee, to remain as global Aids co-ordinator. ….Last spring he faced his biggest crisis — the exploitation by the Republican right of his incendiary former pastor Jeremiah Wright, a man whose penchant for polarization was pathological. At a moment of extreme emotion and political peril, Obama found a way to give a speech that remains the greatest of recent times, to remind Americans of their complex and painful racial past, and not to condescend or cavil. The intellectual achievement of the speech was impressive enough — sufficient to provoke Garry Wills, the Lincoln scholar, to compare it to the Gettysburg address. That Obama wrote and delivered it as he heard in his ears every racial stereotype that had pummeled his psyche for his entire life bespoke an emotional maturity that still shocks.

… there is something real about this quality that is not simply a projection of so many hopes. At several points in the gut-wrenching emotional rollercoaster of last year he simply disappeared alone into a hotel room for a few minutes to gather his thoughts and restrain his feelings. It was this emotional balance and temperamental maturity that led many to see him as a president long before it ever became feasible or even imaginable.

... Obama’s immediate and most pressing crisis is a global economy teetering on the edge. It is also a resilient banking crisis in the US that has yet to resolve itself and a collapse in demand that threatens to turn a recession into something much darker. Worse, the current budget outlook would make even Bush Republicans blanch — trillions in deficits as far as the eye can see and a record national debt (outside the second world war). ..The sheer extent of the damage that the outgoing president has done to American and global financial balance is hard to overstate. He spent like a trust-fund baby who would never have to balance the books or earn a living. He made the entitlement crisis worse by adding a massive new healthcare programme for the elderly in a naked attempt to win Florida for ever. Because of an ideological insistence on partial privatisation, desperately needed reform of social security ended in miserable failure. Trillions of dollars were poured into a war against Iraq waged on the basis of a WMD threat that didn’t exist.

Obama’s response has been to turn not to ideologues but to the smartest economic team he could find. His Treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, was integral to the Bush administration’s response to the crisis; no one doubts that Larry Summers, incoming head of the National Economic Council, is one of the sharpest economic minds on the planet. ..The policy, or what we are beginning to glimpse of it, is just as bipartisan. There will be a big increase in infrastructure projects, aimed at maximal impact on growth. But there will also be tax cuts for the middle class and a bevy of Republican-friendly business tax breaks to maximise the boost to demand. The tax hikes for the very wealthy — the only real economic difference between Obama and McCain last autumn — will not happen. No one wants to suck any money out of the spending economy right now for any reason. ..The most striking news of the past week is a strong indication that Obama will unveil a very tough spending budget, will tackle new financial regulations early and will put real reform of the entitlement state on the table. In some ways, he has no choice. Given America’s current level of public and private debt, the president-elect cannot borrow another few trillion in a few years without reassuring global markets that there is a long-term prospect for American fiscal balance.

…In foreign policy, the same pragmatism abounds. Although withdrawal of troops from Iraq will occur, Obama knows all too well that the current lull in sectarian violence is extremely fragile and that the power vacuum left by withdrawal could spark a new civil or regional war. So expect some foot-dragging.

On Afghanistan, the president-elect is too shrewd to raise the kind of utopian expectations of democracy invoked so glibly by Bush. He plans to increase troop levels there but is reconciled to the fact that the best that can be hoped for is prevention or eradication of terrorist training camps that could directly hurt Americans.

On detention, interrogation and rendition, Obama has also been hemmed in by the Bush legacy. On torture, Obama is clear enough. The appointment of a heavyweight enemy of torture, Leon Panetta, to the CIA, and of a civil libertarian, Dawn Johnsen, in the critical role as head of the White House’s Office of Legal Counsel, is as blunt a signal as any new president could send that the days of Bush and Dick Cheney are over. Among Obama’s first moves will be an executive order closing the torture and detention camp at Guantanamo.

..Obama also understands that restoring America’s moral standing on the torture question could actually give the US government a little more leeway on detention and rendition. If the world knows that maltreatment won’t happen, some sane, constitutional and legal provisions for detention without charge could be constructed on the British model. The rationale is not torturing for “intelligence” but protecting the public while evidence is searched for and doubt remains. ..

Will there be prosecutions for war crimes? Obama will not embrace that as a programme. But he is a former president of the Harvard Law Review and a teacher of constitutional law. If evidence of war crimes emerges, he will not prevent his attorney-general from prosecuting, as he must. The law grinds on — and as the Bush torture era recedes, my bet is that it will grind rather relentlessly.

What concerns Obama most of all is the Bush assertion of inherent constitutional powers to designate any human being — citizen or non-citizen, in America or anywhere else — as an “enemy combatant” and to detain them indefinitely without trial and torture them at will. This, the president-elect fully understands, is in effect the abolition of the constitution. He will take an oath on Tuesday to protect that constitution, not eviscerate it in the tradition of his predecessor.

On Israel, perhaps, we will see the biggest shift. Obama has so far been preternaturally silent on the Gaza bombardment, in deference to the “one president at a time” mantra and because he knows full well that if he were not about to become president, the Israelis would not have launched their attack. Obama does not want to get into a war of words with Israel before he even takes office, but he shows every sign of tackling the Middle East the way he has defused America’s culture wars. He will try to prick the passion and lay out a rational solution. We all know the contours of the deal that the Israelis and the Palestinians are too politically divided and weak to agree to: a two-state compromise, a roll-back of settlements, an international force on the border with the West Bank, a cessation of terrorism, and financial compensation for displaced Palestinians seeking a right of return to Israel’s pre-1967 borders. Still, if any fight could remain totally immune to Obama’s moderation, it is surely the Israeli-Palestinian death match. ..

… he will almost certainly try to change the game with a very public and early appeal to the world’s Muslims. He will take the oath of office using his full name, Barack Hussein Obama, and will likely give a big speech soon that may give his domestic advisers heartburn. His face remains one of America’s most potent weapons in the war of ideas that is integral to winning the fight against jihadist terrorism. What he is looking for is a grand bargain in the Middle East just as surely as he is seeking a grand bargain in domestic fiscal matters. Both bargains would be made possible by grave and growing crises that help to scramble the recent past, by an overarching rhetorical appeal to the masses behind the political leaders and by a bit of good luck and planning.

Be assured that Obama is more of a strategist than a tactician. He knows that all the regional conflicts are interlocked and is often a few steps ahead of his enemies (just ask Clinton or McCain). To move Israel forward, he needs to engage Syria. To deal with Gaza, he has to test the waters with Iran. To achieve minimalist goals in Afghanistan, he needs Pakistan.

When you listen to him rattle off all the dimensions of the broader conflict, you are aware that this is a president who does not see the world in black and white or in with-us-or-against-us terms. He sees it as a series of interconnected conflicts that can be managed by pragmatic solutions, combined with a little rhetorical fairy dust and willingness to offer respect where Bush provided merely contempt. This is not a panacea. But it is not nothing either.

…If you close your eyes and imagine what this combination of fiscal and foreign policy realism portends, you will come to a pretty obvious conclusion. This Democratic liberal is actually, when it comes down to it, a man almost entirely within the mainstream spectrum of the European centre right. Imagine a Cameron-style Tory becoming president of the United States and try to come up with something he would do differently. This blend of pragmatism and realism reminds me in the American context of Eisenhower more than any other recent president. Obama has the unerring instincts of a conciliator and a moderate Tory. But he has the rhetorical skills of a Kennedy or a Churchill. That’s a potent combination.

..There is something about Obama’s willingness to give others credit, to approach so many issues with such dispassionate pragmatism, and to shift by symbols and speeches the mood and tenor of an entire country that gives one a modest form of optimism. …”