Now Obama can set agenda for change

On Tuesday night, the world will witness the swearing-in of the 44th president of the United States with palpable excitement.

Never before has the international community ‘‘participated’’ with such deep emotion in an electoral process that so obviously transcended borders, culminating in the inauguration of President Barack H. Obama.

The pomp and pageantry are expected to live up to their billing, witnessed by an estimated two million souls on Pennsylvania Avenue alone, and millions more in the US and all over the world.

This is to be expected. After all, the American presidency is the most powerful office on earth, for the US is still the only superpower left intact after the demise of the Soviet Union.

President Obama’s inauguration will be significant in three ways: because of who he is, what he says he will do, and the circumstances that produced him.

First of all, Obama is an African-American with Kenyan roots, a man who beat all the odds to win the presidency of a country where, as late as 50 years ago, blacks were being lynched by racist bigots.

And then he is a man with superior personal attributes. He rose from obscurity, went on to beat Senator Hillary Clinton, a household name backed by a formidable political machine, and then battled gallant old John McCain, to clinch the presidency.

And his strength was not merely oratorical as some have averred; his were extraordinarily effective organisational skills that could not be matched by those of his opponents.

Here, then, is a man who pulled himself up by the bootstraps, and by so doing, he personified the American dream: that with hard work, huge talent, audacity of hope and some luck, anything is possible.

Secondly, President Obama is a product of his time. It is possible that in different circumstances, with Americans prancing around due to a super-healthy economy and an abundance of resources, they would not have listened to him. But they did.

He brought a message of hope where there was despair due to an economy in the doldrums, with millions of Americans losing their jobs and their homes. He promised to revive the economy and offered sensible solutions to the ill-advised Iraq war.

In short, he gave Americans a departure from the devastating neo-conservative policies of his predecessor, George W. Bush.

He told Americans ‘‘yes, we can’’ and they responded in unison, giving him the mandate to try all those things he had promised in his message. President Obama’s time had come.

Leader of the free world

Now what remains is for him to fulfil his agenda of change, a tall order indeed. The reason is simple. America may not be the richest nation on earth, but its economy is still the mightiest.

That is why the Wall Street meltdown affected almost every financial capital in Europe and most of Asia. Now everyone will be waiting to see what he does to revive the economy.

Beyond that, President Obama will be expected to take up the mantle of the leader of the free world, a mandate that eluded the hapless George Bush when he became too fixated on the war against terror.

Beyond extricating the US from those wars, it will be President Obama’s duty to win back all the goodwill towards America lost due to Bush’s myopic leadership.

He will be guided by America’s global interests, and he should not be expected to become a Santa Claus to all the ailing economies of the world.

Let us hope, though, that he will have a soft spot for Africa. But it would be foolhardy for the continent to harbour unrealistic expectations. President Obama is an American first, and a citizen of the world only incidentally.