Dreams from My Father

I am reading, and greatly enjoying, Barack Obama’s account of his early life, written of course long before he became President of the USA or even a candidate for the Presidency.

On the evidence of what I have read so far, he comes across as a most extraordinary person and, given half a chance, may turn out to be a great president. He is very intelligent but others before him have been intelligent; he is very confident in himself but then you have to have supreme self-confidence if you want to get on in politics. What makes Obama unique is the fact his self-confidence is rooted in not only a multiracial but also an international experience.

When you come to think of it, all leaders of modern times have found their inspiration in a sense of national identity. And why not, since what binds us together is still the idea of the nation? I myself subscribe to, and am a product of (the myth of) England. And I suppose I will always be the most at ease with the English of my background and generation, but what is true at a personal and emotional level clearly will not suffice in trying to find a way forward in the modern world.

Much as it may cost us, we simply have to move beyond our blinkered, superior way of looking at the world. Obama really is a product of the world in the way that no other western leader before him has been. That doesn’t make him better than those before him, just better-equipped to try to come to terms with the world. When you grow up, the child of a mixed marriage, in Hawaii, Indonesia, Kenya and the United States, when you are intelligent and well-educated, you simply must have a different way of looking at the world.