Change agent

Change is coming to America,” was the repeated, resonant line of Barack Obama’s speech in Iowa after it became clear that he had indeed won the most pledged delegates and practically clinched the Democratic nomination. Does charisma reside in the leader, the followers or the situation, asks Joseph Nye (who famously formulated the concept of soft power), and concludes that it’s a bit of all three. Obama’s personal magnetism is undeniable, as is the fact that a down and out America, battered by a misguided war, a collapsing economy and a general sense of declining self-worth in engaging with the world, is aching for someone to rally around.

But Obama sceptics dismiss his appeal as a surrender to a romantic, if not outright dangerous, fantasy. The general perception is that Clinton is a known quantity, while Obama is sheer untested possibility. In policy matters, the candidates are almost identical. Either way, the American presidency, still the most powerful office in the world, is not about credentials as a policy wonk, but the ability to galvanise the country. And on that score, Obama is spectacularly gifted. He has held national office for barely four years, but his life is his record. He trusted his own judgment on the war in Iraq, at a time when his own party leaders caved in to the common mistaken consensus. At a time when his radical black pastor proved to be a political liability, Obama shunned the easy option of dissociating himself and turned the situation around to ask the troubling, tricky questions about racial bitterness. His kind of leadership is not just about the courage to confront complex realities, but also about the refusal to condescend to the American people by resorting to the Manichean simplifications of his political peers.

But to carry the general election, Obama has to offer more than just himself, as his detractors have pointed out. He has to hunker down and engage with the sections of the electorate who most stingingly dismissed him, Clinton’s core constituency of disaffected working-class whites who were less than impressed by Obama’s cerebral policy solutions, his hybrid heritage and his promises of cross-partisan unity. Also, as our columnist today points out, he has to win the confidence of the rest of the world that he reads their problems. Recall the last election, when John Kerry’s qualified decisions, his recognition of ambiguous truths were turned around to tar him as a “flipflopping” elitist? Obama is all too vulnerable to a rejigged version of the same smear tactics this fall. But who knows, perhaps, change is indeed coming to America.