Messiah or politician? Two sides of Obama

Julia Suryakusuma ,  JAKARTA   |  Wed, 01/28/2009 3:25 PM  |  Opinion

On the day Barack Obama was sworn in as president of the United States, a Jakarta radio station asked me to join a talk show about "Obama as messiah". The topic didn't surprise me: So many people in the US and all around the world have incredible expectations of this man, almost as if he is - yes - a messiah.

What's the definition of a messiah? "One who is anticipated as, regarded as, or professes to be, a savior or liberator." With the world in the state it is, it's understandable that people should yearn for a rescuer, a "knight in shining armor", who will fix the disasters around us, and save us all.

So I googled "Obama messiah", and was amazed at what I found (try it yourself: http://obamamessiah.blogspot.com. It was not just adulation but even the attribution of saint-like qualities, and more. Some images depicted him with halos or light radiating from his crown cakra.

Some compared him with Jesus, others even deified him: "Obama is God". A reggae song by Makadem, a singer from Obama's father's homeland, Kenya, was posted on the site: "Obama Be Thy Name, Thy Change Shall Come, Thy Will Be Done .". A take on the Lord's Prayer, it's just one of an endless stream of, well, um, hymns about Obama.

The blogspot was also packed with a huge selection of raves about the greatness of His Obamaness.

"A Lightworker - An Attuned Being with Powerful Luminosity and High-Vibration Integrity who will actually help usher in a New Way of Being" (Mark Morford, San Francisco Chronicle).

"His story exemplifies the quest of the Solar Hero . Does it not feel as if some special hand is guiding Obama on his journey?" (Daily Kos, liberal political blog)

"He is not operating on the same plane as ordinary politicians . the agent of transformation in an age of revolution, a figure uniquely qualified to open the door to the 21st century." (Gary Hart, American politician, 1988 presidential candidate).

"Barack Obama is our collective representation of our purest hopes, our highest visions and our deepest knowings . He's our product out of the all-knowing quantum field of intelligence." (Eve Konstantine, from "The Obama Vibe", Hufftington Post)

In fact, Obamamania was in full steam even before the man was elected, partly because he is inspirational, and partly also out of relief that he wasn't George Bush, considered by most Americans to be the worse president of the last 50 years (ever, some even say). Muslim countries in particular saw in him hope for a new era of relations with the West, a magic fix for the Middle East from a President with Hussein as his middle name.

So it was not surprising that the first three questions I was asked on the radio talk show were, why didn't Obama mention Gaza during the speech he gave at his inauguration as the 44th president of the US?

Would the US now pay more attention to Indonesia? And if Obama makes a speech in a major Islamic country in his first 100 days (as many predict), will it be Indonesia?

The answer to the first question is easy enough. Even as president-elect he was silent on Gaza, so why would his inaugural speech - meant to confirm his commitment to American interests and to unify the nation - touch upon such a sensitive subject?

Change he will try to instill, but it's frankly unrealistic to expect any American president to make a sudden break with the past, condemn Israel, and risk losing the support of the powerful Jewish lobby in the US.

Not only that. The crowd didn't gather in Washington to hear about Gaza, Afghanistan or Pakistan. They wanted to see with their own eyes the first African-American president, "a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant" take the oath of office and speak words that affirm their faith in US democracy. The Middle East will have to wait.

And as for Obama paying more attention to us, it's wishful thinking to expect him to suddenly switch US foreign policy just because he has childhood connections with Indonesia. Sure, repairing the image of the US in the world is top on his foreign policy agenda, in particular in Islamic countries.

But the Middle East requires more urgent attention than Indonesia, so Cairo, for example - a US ally and a traditional centre for Islamic culture - would make more sense as a venue for keynote speech to Muslims. The truth is Obama is not a messiah, he is a politician, and politics, as Bismarck said, is just the "art of the possible".

Obama knows this well because he was shaped as a politician by his time in Chicago, "City of the Big Shoulders" and home of Al Capone (America's best-known gangster), famous for its pugilistic politics. Succeeding there requires real street smarts and that makes him a genuine tough guy.

In fact, Delmarie Cobb, a longtime Chicago operative who knew Obama long before he became a star, claims that "there a little bit of a gangster in all of us".

Case in point: in his first Senate election, Obama delivered what some called the "political execution" of Alice Palmer, a friend and former mentor, who was also running.

Other interpretations are kinder, saying that challenging the signatures on Palmer's nominating petitions is normal procedure, that he challenged the petitions for all three other opponents, and that Palmer was not a friend or mentor anyway, just an acquaintance.

Whatever the case, it showed Obama could do bare-knuckle politics when he had to, and even the supporters of Palmer secretly admired him for it.

All of us have two sides - yin and yang - and Obama's no exception. He may not be a gangster politician, but he sure ain't a messiah either! Yes, he's a phenomenon, and one that we haven't seen for a long time, but he's also a politician and very human too.

And it won't help Obama if we think he's any more than that. It runs the risk of everyone turning on him when their new god makes mistakes, as inevitably he will. Digging us all out of the worldwide mess that Bush built is not going to be quick or easy, and it will need a firm grip on reality.

So thank God he's got Michelle there to pull him into line and remind him of all his flaws!

The writer is the author of Sex, Power and Nation.

Copyright © 2008 The Jakarta Post - PT Bina Media Tenggara. All Rights Reserved.