Obama and Change

By Antonio C. Abaya
Nov. 05, 2008

At 11:45 am of November 05, based on partial returns from most of the states, CNN projected 89 state electoral votes for John McCain, and 206 for Barack Obama. The BBC has a more updated score card: 135 for McCain, 207 for Obama.

With California the only big state still not tabulated in, with its 55 electoral votes conceded to Obama, it looked hopeless for McCain.

The CIA had failed to wipe out Osama bin Laden and Ayman al_Zwahiri in Pakistan, in time to save McCain. The white supremacist neo-Nazi skinheads had failed to terminate Obama. The US military had failed to bomb Iran before Nov. 04 and present Obama with a fait accompli from which he would not have been able to walk away.

At 12 noon of Nov. 05 (Manila time), CNN projected that Obama has been elected the 44th president of the USA.

What an historic day this has been. America has re-invented itself, without a civil war, without a violent and bloody revolution. And the whole world rejoices at this rebirth of “unyielding hope.”

Obama is a burst of sunshine that pierces an enveloping darkness, a radiant spring that pushes back the gloom of winter. Would that this spirit of renewal will persist and give eminence again to the innate goodness of the American people.

Personally, I can now revisit the country where I spent four and a half happy years – from September 1956 to April 1961 - first as a student and then, after graduation, as an industrial chemist. I was back in the US more than 15 times after that for occasional visits. But the last time I visited was in May 2001, for the wedding of my daughter Gina in scenic Carmel in California.

As George W. Bush and his neo-con government led the US to war in Iraq, premised on a pack of lies, I vowed to myself that I would never set foot on the US again as long as Bush was president.

And I was not alone in my family to make that pledge. My late wife’s brother-in-law (my bala-e) Helmut - an American of German descent and a card-carrying member of the Republican Party – also vowed not to return to the land of his birth as long as Bush was in the White House.

(At this point, my computer broke down, apparently overwhelmed by the news of Obama’s electoral victory, and had to be rushed to the ICU of the computer hospital. Which is the reason why this column failed to appear in print, as scheduled, on Thursday, Nov. 6.)

When I resumed writing this piece, I received information that George W. Bush had bought a 98,842-acre (about 40,000 hectares) farm in Acuifero Guarani in northern Paraguay, between Brazil and Bolivia. This was apparently first reported on October 16, 2006 by Prensa Latina of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Unconfirmed, however, is the scuttlebutt that George W and family had been prevented recently by a US Delta Force detachment from leaving for Paraguay and was allegedly confined to Camp David. Supposedly, Mr. Bush is seeking to avoid facing charges of crimes against humanity being filed against him and Vice-President Dick Cheney at the United Nations for the war in Iraq.

If true – and there are any number of American anti-war protest groups which have demanded such a recourse – this could well be Barack Obama’s baptism of fire in messy foreign policy disputes.

Then Senator Obama opposed the Iraq war right from the start, as he liked to remind the war-weary American electorate during the primaries and the electoral campaign. But if he were to support a war crimes trial against Bush and Cheney, he would antagonize the 46 percent of the American voters who had voted for John McCain, thus dividing all over again the public so soon after receiving a solid mandate to unify it.

On the other hand, if he were to allow Bush and Cheney to escape accountability for their “crimes against humanity,” he would disappoint many among the 52 percent who voted for him who expect some punitive action against the neo-con war mongers who wasted some two trillion dollars in taxpayers’ money and caused the death of more than 4,000 American servicemen and women, not to mention hundreds of thousands of Iraqis..

During the primaries and electoral campaign, Obama promised that, if elected, he would pull out US troops from Iraq in 16 months after he takes office. But he has since amended that position and accepted the idea of allowing 50,000 US troops to remain in Iraq in “non-combat” roles. This would not be much different from McCain’s position of staying in Iraq “even up to 100 years,” citing US troops in Germany, Japan and South Korea who have kept their garrisons for 63 years and still counting.

Actually, Iraq as an issue was cited by only ten percent of voters surveyed as their number one concern. Sixty two percent said the economy was their chief concern.

As well it should be. On the day Obama was elected president, the Dow Jones index dropped almost 450 points, as if to mock him and dare him to come and fix it up. Since Jan. 1, almost 800,000 American have lost their jobs. Some four million Americans are expected lose their homes in the next two years because they will no longer be able to afford the monthly amortizations. Car sales are down at least 30 percent compared to last year. Home values continue to fall, whittling down the equities of millions of Americans.

Can Obama fix the broken US economy? He has promised to create five million jobs in the next two years, “five million jobs that cannot be outsourced.” That sounds like a stab at protectionism. And why not? Free trade and globalization have boomeranged on Bush’s America, even as he tried to protect American jobs and American producers by putting up numerical quotas against lumber from Canada, prawns and catfish from Vietnam, steel from South Korea and Brazil, in addition to existing quotas on imported sugar, garments, shoes, motorcycles, etc.

Obama may be honest enough to admit that free trade and globalization have robbed American workers of millions of jobs, which have migrated to China, India and other points east. In which case, the solution he has in mind may likely work against the economic interests of current hosts of outsourced jobs, including the Philippines.

Those who are skeptical of the accuracy of scientific public opinion surveys should take note that on the day before Election Day, the CNN Poll of Polls, which averaged several concurrent polls, put Obama ahead of McCain by seven percentage points, with another seven percent still undecided.

The actual nationwide election results gave Obama 52 percent of the popular vote, compared to 46 for McCain, or a margin of six points. If there was a Bradley Effect, it was not enough to materially affect the outcome.

The defining mantra in this campaign was Change. Obama early on realized that the American people were aching for genuine, meaningful change. Change in Iraq. Change in economic relations. Change in social services, especially in health care. Obama hinged his whole campaign on Change We Need, and the American public responded positively.

McCain’s belated attempt to present himself also as an agent of change was not credible. Many voters rightly saw him as merely a clone of George W. When voters were asked which candidate represented Change, 92 percent said Obama. Only five percent said McCain.

We in the Philippines also ache for Change. But do we have a visionary Obama in our future? Or do we have nothing but tiresome and predictable McCains? *****

Reactions to tonyabaya@gmail.com. Other articles in www.tapatt.org and in acabaya.blogspot.com.