At last it has happened. A man with a strange name?Barack Hussein Obama?has been elected to serve as the 44th President of the US. After eight years when the world had given up on the US, the country has proved that it is still capable of delivering a surprise like no other. America is the oldest nation in the world; the others were kingdoms or Empires but did not see themselves as nations. America also saw itself when it was born after its War of Independence?the American Revolution as it is called?as a unique nation with a mission to show the world that it was created with ideals in mind. It is easy to forget as many sneer at American imperialism that this was a country which twice fought in Europe when its own borders were not threatened to save Europe from some horrible regimes.
There have been theories of American decline. Paul Kennedy wrote about its some years ago and then the American economy revived. It fought Islamist terrorism through the 1990s and the 2000s . It has stretched itself militarily in Iraq (though it did get rid of a genocidal monster who killed thousands of Shi?a Iraqis) and in Afghanistan where the Taliban are another misogynist medieval mob. America besmirched its reputation in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo as it trampled upon human rights and used torture. The rest of the world despaired as America?s shining torch faded away.
Now there is a change. Obama is someone who could have become President only in America. I can think of no other country in Europe or Africa or Asia where the child of a foreign(Kenyan) immigrant married to a woman from another race could be eligible to and aspire to run for the highest office and indeed win. Imagine in India a Muslim boy whose father had migrated from, say, Malaysia got a professorship at Delhi University, married a Hindu Assamese woman and became Prime Minister. Even a native Muslim of India born Muslim parents would not get past the first hurdle, not in a nation where the majority of Prime Ministers have been not just Hindus but Brahmins.
Yet what sort of difference will or can Obama make? An enormous psychological one, of course, giving many the ?audacity of hope?. But an American President has limited powers to change much. Obama will have a Democratic Congress and that is a plus. But in American terms, he has had very little experience of how to make the Congress fall in step. John F Kennedy found that for all his glamour he could not get legislation through the Congress. It was Lyndon Johnson who had the senatorial experience to deliver the reforms after President Kennedy was assassinated.
Obama is fresh but at the same time he is young and inexperienced. He will have to learn faster than Jimmy Carter or even Bill Clinton did how Washington works. The financial meltdown is being dealt with but the depth of the recession is such that urgent action will be expected from him. His economic policy has been sketchy though better than McCain?s. The crisis is not as bad as the Great Depression and yet Obama will be expected to be like FDR. He will have to restore confidence among banks and employers and workers and households that the economy can be made prosperous again soon.
Stories of the end of capitalism or of globalisation are premature. Obama is not there to bury capitalism but to restart it. He may be protectionist to begin with especially regarding outsourcing. I hope he is not. I also hope that he gets the Doha Round moving again. This is more likely since Democrats are less susceptible to the farmers? lobby. He will make a bold attempt to provide widespread, though not universal, healthcare. He may get his redistributive tax cut through but there Congress will call the shots.
Being a black man, Obama is bound to arise false hopes in the rest of the world. He is not a pacifist and he will not alter American foreign policy much. Troops will be withdrawn from Iraq but that is on the cards anyway. He will send more troops to Afghanistan and take a much more belligerent stance with Pakistan than before. But he may also as a compensation for that try to tackle the Kashmir issue. India should not go prickly at this prospect. Kashmir is a mess and given the frequent violation of human rights there, an international embarrassment if only Indians could look at themselves the way the world sees them. So, Obama is likely to be a challenge as much as an opportunity for India.
The author is a prominent economist and Labour peer