Flawed Hillary, Trump show how much Obama will be missed

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump (left) speaks as his Democratic counterpart Hillary Clinton gestures during the presidential debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York on September 26, 2016. PHOTO | JEWEL SAMAD | AFP

What you need to know:

  • Despite facing greater hostility from Congress and the Senate than most of his predecessors ever dealt with, Barack Obama has handled it all with a rare charm and grace (all this time chalking up considerable achievements). 
  • The scandals attached to candidates vying to replace him amplify his qualities, which is why he now enjoys popular ratings higher than most second term presidents at this stage and double those of George W. Bush at the same stage of his presidency. 

Following an American election from Kenya is a strange thing not least because of the number of times that the name Kenya comes up on the campaign trail.

The rise of Barack Obama has meant that nearly all Americans now know of our little country, mainly because of the false rumour that Obama was born in Kenya and was therefore ineligible to run for president in 2008. 

Fully 43 per cent of Republicans and 20 per cent of all American adults believe that theory. Someone even came up with a fake birth certificate “proving” that Obama was born in Mombasa and is, therefore, not an American.

What’s more, proponents of this rumour, which of course has no foundation in fact but as Mark Twain said, never let the truth stand in the way of a good story – believe that Obama is a Muslim.

To these critics, the former secretary of state Colin Powell came up with a befitting retort: what if Obama were Muslim? “Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president?” 

Anyway, all these negative mentions of Kenya should not detract from the fact that Barack Obama is already the big winner of this strangest of election cycles. 

The two candidates running to replace him, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, are spectacularly flawed (one more spectacularly than the other one but never mind). The only positive thing about the race is that they have succeeded in showing Americans and the world how lucky they have been to have had Obama in the White House. 

EIGHT YEARS

Here is a man who has gone for a good eight years without a whiff of scandal being attached to his name and, despite facing greater hostility from Congress and the Senate than most of his predecessors ever dealt with, has handled it all with a rare charm and grace (all this time chalking up considerable achievements).

The scandals attached to the candidates vying to replace him amplify his qualities, which is why he now enjoys popular ratings higher than most second term presidents at this stage and double those of George W. Bush at the same stage of his presidency.

The American media commentariat, which overwhelmingly supports Hillary Clinton, has spent a lot of time puzzling over why young voters in particular are not enthused by her candidature and repeatedly tell pollsters they find her opportunistic and inauthentic. 

As Kenyan commentator Salim Lone noted in an astute recent piece, many voters are turned off by Hillary partly because of how much energy she spends courting the rich (with a whiff of graft and impropriety) having stalked her throughout her career. Many also find her “secretive and dishonest,” hardly two qualities to fill supporters with enthusiasm.

 For me, the most baffling aspect of the campaign has been the American media’s complete rejection of the assertion that the Clinton campaign was the first prominent force to try and cast Obama both as a Kenyan and Muslim “other” during the 2008 primary contest. 

Well, it is simply true. This is how TheGuardian reported the Clinton campaign’s distribution of a photo of Obama in Muslim dress on February 26, 2008.

AFRICAN DRESS

“Barack Obama’s campaign team accused Hillary Clinton’s beleaguered staff yesterday of mounting a dirty tricks operation by circulating a picture of him in African dress, feeding into false claims on US websites that he is a Muslim.”

“David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign manager, described it as ‘the most shameful, offensive fear-mongering we’ve seen from either party in this election’. Obama has spent much of the campaign emphasising he is a Christian not a Muslim and did not study at a madrasa.”

The Clinton campaign’s dirty tricks against Obama all those years offer a window into her all-or-nothing ambition driven career. 

The less said about Trump the better. It’s amazing that such an unhinged fellow has come so close to the presidency and the latest video outlining his shocking attitudes towards women is the latest evidence that he is in a class all of his own. 

The Atlantic magazine summed him up well in an editorial in the past week: “He is erratic, secretive, and xenophobic (read racist)...He is easily goaded, a poor quality for someone seeking control of America’s nuclear arsenal. He is an enemy of fact-based discourse; he is ignorant of, and indifferent to, the Constitution; he appears not to read.” 

The decision is for the Americans to make but whichever way it goes, it appears clear that the world will miss the calm, steady leadership and unimpeached integrity of the “Kenyan-Muslim” who has been in charge at the White House most of the last decade.

 

@mutigam