Obama 'youth-quake' may bury McCain

If in this country you go to the kind of hotels I go to, kiosks, be sure you know what to expect when you order toast.

You'll get a slice of bread, period.

From Kisumu to Mombasa, this has been my experience.

But if what you really want with your tea is a toasted slice of bread, this is what you must say: "I'll have toasted toast."

Well, this week toasted toast is not even bread. It's a man: John McCain.

I know this because something suddenly occurred to me this week. McCain's opponent in the U.S. Presidential race, Barack Obama, is poised to cause an American youth-quake, a national eruption of the youth vote.

This is what might sink McCain on November 4.

Three weeks ago in Pennsylvania, the state that McCain has decided to turn into the "basket for all his eggs" because Obama has run him out of all other competitive states, some 50,000 youth swarmed a free Bruce Springsteen concert.

An online magazine, Philly.com told it this way: Springsteen had pounded through his second song as though his acoustic guitar was a pickax, then handed it off to an assistant. The rocker in rolled-up plaid sleeves slung another guitar over his shoulder and tossed out a raspy line that made clear to the wildly cheering youth how he feels about Barack Obama.

"We tried this four years ago," he yelled out. "This time we're winning." The crowd roared their approval.

"I don't know about you," the rock star continued, "but I want my house back, I want my America back, and I want my country back."

He had their attention. So he let out Obama's signature track that belts out on thunderous speakers each time the candidate romps onto a campaign stage, The Rising.

A huge part of Obama voters have been registered using such youth-drawing concerts.

Obama's youthfulness, transcendence of race and coolness have awakened the sleeping giant of the youth vote, Newsweek wrote this week.

Maggie, a student at Bradley University in Illinois, works nights. And on Saturdays, instead of sleeping in, she gets in her car and drives three hours to neighbouring Iowa to hunt votes for Obama, said Newsweek.

Kuehler, another student, pays her own petrol to Iowa and forks out $15 for doughnuts for the kids she recruits to knock on doors for Obama.

Yet another Illinois student told Newsweek that her father, a Republican, was so taken by Obama that early in the primaries, when she backed John Edwards, he flew her to New Hampshire to attend an Obama rally. Now she's firmly on the Obama train.

Pollsters tell us that Obama is now 10 points ahead of McCain among likely voters. But pollsters gather their statistics on home land lines.

What if all the unlikely voters, the students with cell phones who elude pollsters, show up on Election Day? What would we call that? Youth-quake.

***
This is to the readers who didn't quite get my drift last week.

Because Obama appears driven by his father's acclaimed intellect and ambition and because he appears singularly determined to make up for his father's flaws, Barack is his father's son.

Two particular traits of Obama Sr that the son appears determined to avoid are overconfidence and arrogance. It is easy to see how both could happen to Junior.

Look, the man is as high up as pride can get anyone. Four years ago no one knew of Obama, so to speak. Now a T-shirt with his face on a dingy street in Old Town Mombasa gets people started.

The son of a goat herder from Kogelo whose granny still has no electricity and running water now has a jet with his name on it.

Pressmen who travel with him in the Boeing 757 describe it as a sleek and compact machine with an office-like private suite in the front for the candidate and his top aides.

When his plane hits the runway and he shuffles from his seat to head for the door, a team of Secret Service agents scramble to secure his path and those outside freeze just about anything moving in his part of town.

When in September he went to Denver to accept his party's nomination for president and four potheads confessed to wanting to assassinate him, Secret Service sealed even the airspace above Renegade, their codename for the candidate.

Who could help this getting into his head?

Whenever Obama is doing well in the polls, a spring gets into his walk and a little cockiness comes about him.

This week he told Indiana that he was beginning to feel a righteous wind at his back. Well, that's the Luo blood in him, if you listen to Kenyan stereotypes.

But when he visited Israel in July, Obama went to the Western Wall and according to tradition inserted a prayer into a crack.

Later we learned that some nut pulled out his prayer and that it got the media. Obama had begged God not to let power get to his head.

Here is the deal. The list of role models for Kenyan youth is terribly short. But they could borrow a leaf from John F. Kennedy's daughter, Caroline.

At Denver, Caroline said, "I've never had someone inspire me the way people tell me my father inspired them. But I do now: Barack Obama!"

The writer is a lecturer of journalism at the United States International University, Nairobi.