What America has done for Obama

Carlos Alberto Montaner

Ted Sorensen, President John F. Kennedy's speechwriter, said that perhaps the election of a Catholic president in 1960 was more difficult than the election of an African American in 2008. Perhaps.

Until that time, all the occupants of the White House had been Protestants. But American society, due to its own internal dynamics, changed in the direction in which it has moved unceasingly since its founding in the late 18th century: the opening to -- and the gradual assimilation of -- all ethnic groups, all cultural trends and the various minorities. As it apparently happens everywhere in the universe, the United States is a society in a perpetual and accelerated expansion.

As Nobel laureate Douglass North explained so well in a recent essay, the United States unintendedly invented for the world what it calls an ''open-access society'' based on competition and the rule of law. The combination of those two elements has generated, at one end, the permanent renewal of the ruling elite on the political field and, at the other end, the greatest technological and scientific development that mankind has ever known.

In turn, this phenomenon has produced an incredible amount of wealth. Following the U.S. example, at least two dozen ''open-access'' countries exist today. Precisely the most prosperous and stable on the planet.

If this viewpoint is correct, Sen. Barack Obama is not here to bring change: He is the product of changes. In barely half a century, African Americans have gone from gallantly fighting for a seat in the front of the bus to struggling for the conquest of the Oval Office. But this way of understanding the United States also defines the true sense of the American presidency. The main function of the chief of state is not to lead the Americans in a direction chosen by him or by the leaders of his party but to perfect the institutions and facilitate the mechanisms that enable people to compete in a fair environment so the whole of society may evolve as a consequence of the decisions freely made by millions of people every day. That's what has made the United States great.

This is misunderstood abroad. I read that the Spaniards would vote overwhelmingly for Obama if they could participate in the U.S. elections. That was the same impression I got after touring several Latin American countries recently: They prefer Obama. Why? For the wrong reasons: because the image of the United States that prevails worldwide is very negative.

Without considering the shadings, without stopping to compare, they see the country as an imperial power manipulated by the big economic corporations, a power that militarily abuses the weakest, consumes a substantial portion of the riches of the planet, pollutes without remorse, alienates the poor within its borders -- to the extreme of denying them medical care -- and generates grave international financial turbulence. In other words, exactly the image projected by Michael Moore in his biased documentaries and by much of the American academic establishment in its college classrooms and publications.

To the world, this is what Obama is going to change. There is a directly proportional relationship between the international degree of emotional support for Obama and the bad perception of the United States. The worse the image of the country, the more confident people are that the young African-American senator will eliminate the reprehensible conduct attributed to the United States.

When Obama says he will change the country (even though he has not defined what he's going to change and how), he is perceived beyond the borders as a revolutionary who will finally put an end to the abuses of the CIA and the International Monetary Fund, withdraw the troops stationed abroad, bring the multinationals to task, protect the environment no matter what the cost, and govern to the benefit of the poor.

What will really happen if Obama gets to the White House? Practically nothing that Obama's supporters abroad dream about. Same as with Kennedy, the Catholic, who did not introduce any fundamental changes in American life in the 1,000 days he governed. The inertia of the open-access society will take over. Competition and the functioning of institutions will lead society in a direction that will unfold at random. Contrary to Kennedy's rhetorical premise, what's important, what's revolutionary is not what Obama can do for his country but what his country has done for Obama in a relatively brief period. That's what is admirable.

January 26, 2008

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