RE: [ALOCHONA] Obama's Victory Ushers in a New America (Joe Klein, the TIME)

another excellent article by Faisal Salahuddin, from USA:
 
dr. maqsud Omar
==============================================================================================================
 
 
 
 
 
 

Committed to PEOPLE'S RIGHT TO KNOW Sunday, November 9, 2008 08:56 AM GMT+06:00     Print Friendly Version Point Counterpoint Longing for Bangladeshi Obamas Faisal Salahuddin AMID a breezy fall campus night when old leaves were falling in the wind, new hopes rising and students cheering, I watched Obama moving America to tears as he gave his victory speech. We all have been moved by the poetry of his improbable journey and the melody of his symbolic victory. Amid swelling inspiration, oddly enough, I felt a tinge of jealousy book-ended by sadness. Jealous of the Americans for having Obama's promise of inclusive tomorrow and sad for us Bangladeshis lacking recent leaders who have offered us such confidence. In the wake of alternating emotions, I felt some premature longing for Bangladeshi Obamas -- young Bangladeshi leaders who can inspire our youth to believe that we all can live beyond us -- for each other and for the country. No, I am not completely naïve or delusional. I know the distance and the difference between the US and Bangladesh. In my own defense, I would just say that longing does not harm, cynicism does. We have a very fertile cottage industry of cynicism, especially when it comes to politics. The ritual is to first get angry, then apathetic and finally cynical. But these often are just lazy emotions to support easy excuses for not getting involved. Obama's victory raises an immediate but wishful question: How long will we have to wait for our political leaders to inspire and unite us and then govern the country? A more introspective and responsible question is: What are our individual responsibilities to perfect our shared destiny as a nation? How long should we harbour hope unbacked by action? Obviously, I don't claim to know the answers, but I know that the choices facing our young generation are stark: to sit back, wait for Great God to come from the heavens (to paraphrase the late, great Bob Marley) to fix our politics or to get involved in our own small capacity both in and from wherever we can. Alexis de Tocqueville once wrote: "Among democratic people, every generation is a new people."Since change takes place generationally, the burden of responsibilities is heavy on Generation Bangladesh who are born around the time of Independence and are 100 million strong. As someone who has not been very involved with the political process I acknowledge that responsibility with guilt. Each generation has to take its responsibility. Our earlier generation did not have independence handed over to them. Independence was their dream and they snatched it from Pakistan. Power does not cede easily. If our generation wants a different political culture, we have to participate in the culture. Not just hope or whine about it as passive onlookers. If our generation wants newer faces in politics, we need to stand up. Not hide behind the stale veil of excuses. I argued in April 2008 Forum that we have some of the ingredients to have our own Obamas: a young, connected and politically aware demography in a society that is undergoing rapid urbanisation and industrialisation in today's globalised world. This group is tired of old politics and hungry for change. True, political change takes time. We are not going to have one big Obama tomorrow. Many small ones for now will do. From the small ones, will emerge the bigger ones. That's how leaders should emerge -- not through the family-sponsored dynastic hatcheries, be at home or abroad. What are some key highlights of the Obama phenomenon and lessons for us? The Obama Phenomenon Obama used several powerful instruments and harnessed several emerging trends in American society. He built a bottom-up grassroots movement using modern technology to form, organize, and fund his campaign. He started a political process that began with a smaller group of committed individuals. He gave people genuine hope and inspiration. Lessons for our political parties Groom young and bottom-up national leaders who have made (are making) it on their own and retained their integrity (no Picchi Hannan or Lomba Hazari please!) Nominate young leaders. Given our demographic destiny, it is not only the right but also the smart thing to do. It will be a low-cost high-return winning strategy for the parties over the next 10 years. Whoever comes to govern Bangladesh after December election should appoint some inspiring honest young leaders in the cabinet. I refuse to believe that the existence of such leaders is nil. Whoever loses the election should learn some grace from McCain's concession speech and the winner could learn some unity from Obama's victory speech. We are tried of seeing after elections greedy hands waving "It's all mine!" when they win and pouty lips whining "I don't want to play now!" when they lose. Lessons for Generation Bangladesh It may be a cheesy cliché but we need to believe that individuals can make a difference. A committed group of individuals together can make a big difference. We need to be involved in our own village or community by leveraging modern technology. We need to go beyond the op-eds or concerts. We can now travel faster and look further than any earlier generations. It is now much easier to organize and contribute to any movement from home or abroad. Let's remember the simple calculus of hope. If you double a dream every hour, you will have more than a million dreams by the end of the day. Don't trust me? Just verify with a calculator. We have to double our hopes and halve our cynicism. That's how the infectious mathematics of optimism works. We also have to remind ourselves that politics always and everywhere in the world is messy because life is. As in life, when moderates avoid politics, it gets only messier. The best way to clean dirty politics to get all of our hands dirty in it. Many hands make the work light and clean. We need to be hopeful but remain patient. Both life and hope share the same rhythm and they need work. The journey of life begins in a single cell in mother's womb. The journey of hope begins in small increments in our soul when we share a common faith in our future wrapped in individual sense of responsibility. Only then we can bend time, shape culture, and compose our own generational history. Faisal Salahuddin, a macroeconomist, writes from Princeton University (faisal.salahuddin@gmail.com)

 

---

To: alochona@yahoogroups.com; bafi@yahoogroups.com; Bangali-Bondhu@yahoogroups.com; BanglaPolitics@yahoogroups.com; banglarnari@yahoogroups.com; editor@e-mela.com; FutureOfBangladesh@yahoogroups.com; issuesonline_worldwide@yahoogroups.com; MuktoChinta@yahoogroups.com; mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com; nfbnews@gononet.com; nondinihussain@gmail.com; notun_bangladesh@yahoogroups.com; odhora@yahoogroups.com; SaleemSamad@hotmail.com; info@sanfeature.com; sanf@gononet.com; editor@satrong.org; sa7rong@yahoogroups.com; TriTioMatra@yahoogroups.com; vm_moderator@yahoo.com; vinnomot@yahoogroups.com
CC: charbak_bd@yahoo.com
From: worldcitizen73@yahoo.com
Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2008 17:35:05 -0800
Subject: [ALOCHONA] Obama's Victory Ushers in a New America (Joe Klein, the TIME)

"Those who say Obama won because of the financial crisis are telling only half the story. He won because he reacted to the crisis in a measured, mature way. He won because...."

Joe Klein: Obama's Victory Ushers in a New America

By JOE KLEIN Joe Klein Wed Nov 5, 2:00 pm ET

Eleven months ago, I attended a John Edwards speech in the little town of Algona, Iowa. It was a Sunday afternoon, and Edwards had drawn a large crowd of mostly uncommitted voters to a local factory that made wind-turbine components. Two things soon became apparent as I interviewed a dozen or so Algonans before the speech. The first was that there were a fair number of Republicans present, a phenomenon I was beginning to notice all over Iowa. They were not yet committed to voting Democratic, but they mentioned their disappointment in George W. Bush, their frustration with the war in Iraq and their dismay with the right-wing religious drift of the state Republican Party. The last time I'd seen so many crossovers was in 1980, when Democrats - angry at Jimmy Carter and their party's leftward drift - made their presence felt at Republican meetings, heralding the onset of the Reagan era.



The other phenomenon was a person. I was talking to a local businessman named Bill Farnham, who wasn't yet sure whom he was voting for, "but I'm really impressed with the organizer Obama sent out here. His name is Nate Hundt, and he's really become part of the community." As he spoke, several other Algonans gathered around and began recounting tales of the young organizer who had come straight to Algona after graduating from Yale six months earlier. Hundt had opened a campaign headquarters in the H&R Block office downtown, joined a local environmental group, shown up for the high school football games. He was a constant presence at civic events. Eventually, Hundt became so much a part of the community that the town leaders asked him to stay on after the caucuses and run for city council. But Hundt had other work to do. The Obama campaign sent him to Colorado, Ohio and North Carolina during the long primary season, then back to Colorado Springs for the general election. "I'm still in touch with my friends from Algona," Hundt said. "In fact, a few of them have come out here to help canvass. But I'm not unique. There are a lot of us who had similar experiences."



Indeed, there are - an army of them, untold thousands of young organizers operating out of more than 700 offices nationwide. And they have delivered a message to Rudy Giuliani, who sneered during the Republican National Convention that he didn't even know "what a community organizer is." This is who they are: they are the people who won this election. They were the heart and soul and backbone of Barack Obama's victory. They are destined to emerge as the next significant generation of American political operatives - similar to the antiwar and antisegregation baby boomers who dominated the Democratic Party after cutting their teeth on the Bobby Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy campaigns of 1968, similar to the pro-life, antitax Reaganauts who dominated the Republican Party and American politics from the election of 1980 ... until now. They are a preview of the style and substance of the Obama Administration.



Obama's decision to expend so much effort on a field organization was quietly revolutionary and a perfect fit for the larger political philosophy that he described when I spoke with him a few weeks ago. Obama insisted that while creating a new energy economy was his No. 1 priority, "we can't divorce the energy issue from what I believe has to be the dominant political theme underlying everything - the economy, health care, you name it. And that is restoring a sense that we're growing the economy from the bottom up and not the top down. That's the overarching philosophical change that we've got to have."



That was the substantive heart of his campaign and of this election. It was a stark difference between the candidates. Unlike many elections I've covered where the stakes were small and the differences between the candidates were minor, this was a big election, with big differences between the candidates. It was a referendum on the Reagan era. Try as he might to dissociate himself from the Bush Administration, John McCain remained a classic Reaganite. He believed in the unilateral exercise of American power overseas, with an emphasis on military might rather than diplomacy. He believed in trickle-down, supply-side, deregulatory economics: his tax plan benefited corporations and the wealthy, in the hopes that with fewer shackles, they would create more jobs. Obama was quite the opposite. Unlike Bill Clinton, whose purpose was to humanize Reaganism but not really challenge it, Obama offered a full-throated rebuttal to Clinton's notion that "the era of Big Government is over." He was a liberal, as charged. But the public was ready, after a 30-year conservative pendulum swing, for activist government.



Although McCain gave a gracious concession speech, the old fighter pilot understood that his argument was a loser - perhaps he even understood that the Reagan revolution had run its course - and so his strategy was to make a big election small. He attacked Obama relentlessly, often foolishly, sometimes scurrilously. The public didn't buy it. This was never more apparent than during the three presidential debates, which probably clinched the election for Obama. McCain was starting from a disadvantage. He had developed a bad case of Washingtonitis; he spoke Senatese, a language of process and tactics that sometimes approached incoherence. In 2000, McCain spoke with a bracing clarity. "The reason why we don't have a patients' bill of rights," he would say, "is because the Republican Party is in the pocket of the insurance industry and the Democrats are in the pocket of the trial lawyers." In the 2008 debates, he skittered from attack to attack, lacking the vision and patience to explain what he would actually do as President. Obama's best moments were when he patiently explained what he would do about the economy, health care, education. Those who say Obama won because of the financial crisis are telling only half the story. He won because he reacted to the crisis in a measured, mature way. He won because in the second debate, he explained to a gentleman named Oliver Clark, in terms that anyone could understand, the financial collapse and the need for a federal bailout.



But this election was about much more than issues. It was the ratification of an essential change in the nature of the country. I've seen two others in my lifetime. The election of John Kennedy ratified the new America that had emerged from war and depression - a place where more people owned homes and went to college, a place where young people had the affluence to be idealistic or to rebel, a place that was safe enough to get a little crazy, a sexier country. Ronald Reagan's election was a rebellion against that - an announcement that toughness had replaced idealism overseas, that individual economic freedom had replaced common economic purpose at home. It was an act of nostalgia, harking back to the "real" America - white, homogeneous, small-town - that the McCain campaign unsuccessfully tried to appeal to.



Obama's victory creates the prospect of a new "real" America. We can't possibly know its contours yet, although I suspect the headline is that it is no longer homogeneous. It is no longer a "white" country, even though whites remain the majority. It is a place where the primacy of racial identity - and this includes the old, Jesse Jackson version of black racial identity - has been replaced by the celebration of pluralism, of cross-racial synergy. After eight years of misgovernance, it has lost some of its global swagger ... but also some of its arrogance. It may no longer be as dominant, economically or diplomatically, as it once was. But it is younger, more optimistic, less cynical. It is a country that retains its ability to startle the world - and in a good way, with our freedom. It is a place, finally, where the content of our President's character is more important than the color of his skin.

__._,_.___

[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.com

Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___