http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/20/obama-inauguration1We will all remember where we were today - even in lazily cynical Britain
Monumental danger has summoned a man whose character matches the hour. Copying Obama must be a global habit
There has never been a day like it for Britain's postwar generations. As that inauguration speech echoes out, the globe itself seems to inhale a mighty, collective intake of breath, frighteningly audacious in its hope.
A BBC World Service poll shows a tidal wave of optimism about what Obama will do, spread out across a rainbow of nations. Here is the world's wish list: first save global finance from ruin; next get out of Iraq; then fix the climate and bring peace to the Middle East. Yes he can, is the world's expectation.
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So here comes the man who says he can. It's an American mystery that this great pool of genius has usually thrown such minnows into the White House. But the monumental present danger has summoned forth a man who promises the intellect, character and power of persuasion to match the hour.
On this day all alive will remember where they were when they saw Obama sworn in, when they heard him speak. I shall be in a Commons meeting room - where Dawn Butler, the black MP for Brent, will be launching "Bernie's list" to promote black candidates - with crowds of mainly ethnic-minority young Brent people gathered to watch Obama's speech. Since the rise of Obama, the MP says, throngs have come forward to join her campaign.
I shall also see Chuka Umunna, the exceptional Labour candidate for Streatham, south London, address students in Brixton - students whom he finds are as eager as never before to think and do politics. "Obama has changed everything. You can't overestimate the effect," he says. After time on the Obama campaign, Umunna says that the man's blackness is only one wonder: "He has changed the possibilities of politics itself." Winning while promising to tax the rich, cut tax for the poor, tackle the climate and reverse Bush's foreign policy, he has made the impossible possible.
Let whoever will be cynical do so today: they will have their I-told-you-so moments. Political passion is unfashionable, risky, naive and destined for disappointment. Enthusiasm is rare in British politics, but today is a reminder that it is always worth celebrating the better over the worse. The hope is not just for what the man will do, but that his brand of politics rubs off on politicians everywhere. It wasn't until Obama was elected on a tax-the-rich ticket that Brown and Darling dared to follow suit, 11 years late. This is a day for politicians to take heart and dare to challenge recycled focus group prejudice. Copying Obama needs to become a global habit.
In a revealing unpublished interview with the Obamas more than a decade ago, Michelle feared that he was "too much the good guy for the kind of brutality and scepticism" of politics. Ruthless calculation is indeed a necessary part of the art, but he seems to have that steely determination too. There is a limit to how moral any effective politician can be: ask that nice Jimmy Carter. Yet this is the day to honour the practice of politics as a high calling, where the power to inspire can swell the hearts of the world. Here at home, a respite from Britain's lazy political cynicism is in order.
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