In praise of… Obama
This blog has been very critical of the Obama administration. The signs are that the administration, if not the man himself, is a Clinton Mk II. As such, it will eventually pave the way for another Bush-like figure; to be sure, it’s already engaging in some rather Bush-like actions itself.
Political realists will no doubt argue that Obama faces a formidable opposition, and that he has to make concessions. This blogger believes that it’s actually a rerun of what happened when New Labour came to power in the UK: the new government was so scared of the Tories (or of their press) that it tried to be more Tory than the Tories. In the end, they succeeded. (Actually, New Labour were Tories from the start, but that’s another story.)
That said, there is at least one thing that Obama has done which does show political courage: he’s come out and condemned the actions of the police that wrongly arrested Harvard’s Henry Louis Gates. Obama could have kept quiet, but he didn’t—three cheers for his willingness to denounce this episode, and not just ‘racism in general’. For anyone who thinks that the election of Obama signals the end of institutional racism, the events in Cambridge, MA are a grim reminder that it remains a reality in the U.S., as in the U.K.
