PULL QUOTE: ‘Today,it is Obama,the man for this particular season,since not only does America need clear leadership on the inside,but itself needs to provide transformative leadership in a world that is going through an economic depression…’ BARACK Hussein Obama is once again the President of the United States of America.

Keith Burrowes

Now, I’m a big fan of MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’, headlined by former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough, the only reasonable GOP voice I’ve heard since, possibly, Bob Dole.  But for the past few months, even Scarborough has been repeating the myth that Obama is isolationist and unwilling to compromise with his political opponents.

From the very moment of Obama’s second victory, as was the case with the first, it became clear that the Republican policy of intransigence is not letting up, and there is a continued stubbornness coming from the Republican party to change, even symbolically.

One of the fairest and most credible commentators on the lead-up to the national elections (and now after it) is Nobel Prize-winning economist, Paul Krugman.  On what network pundits have been calling the most immediate challenges to the viability of Obama’s new term is the “fiscal cliff”, Krugman has this to say in an article published a week ago in the New York Times: “And then there’s the matter of the “fiscal cliff.”  Contrary to the way it’s often portrayed, the looming prospect of spending cuts and tax increases isn’t a fiscal crisis. It is, instead, a political crisis brought on by the G.O.P.’s attempt to take the economy hostage.” Those same Republicans have used a watchword to denigrate Obama over the past four years, the label of “communist.”  While reality itself disputes this, something can be said for the shaping of his political philosophy of which parallels can be made to at least one communist icon, Che Guevara.  Just as Che’s concern for the impoverished of the Americas was inspired initially by his time spent on a leper colony for the poor, i.e., in direct contact with the people he claimed to be fighting for, so did Obama’s years as a community organiser who came out of the middle-class and who saw their problems help to shape his own political philosophy.  Those were the people he spoke about in his victory speech, particularly the part where he said: “We believe in a generous America, in a compassionate America, in a tolerant America open to the dreams of an immigrant's daughter who studies in our schools and pledges to our flag to the young boy on the south side of Chicago who sees a life beyond the nearest street corner to the furniture worker's child in North Carolina who wants to become a doctor or a scientist, an engineer or an entrepreneur, a diplomat or even a president.”

And it is not that no other politician has ever stated words to that effect, and it is not that there has never been a charismatic candidate before, nor even a black one (Jesse Jackson was arguably more identifiably African-American and more charismatic), but the difference with Barack Obama is that behind the style there is both substance and sincerity, and that is what distinguishes him from other politicians.  Indeed, it arguably is what makes him really an apolitical person trying to operate in the most high-stakes corridors of political power in the world. Over the next four years, the American political system has to make the decision to become less political and more “system”, meaning that the jockeying and posturing and special interests have to be toned down considerably, if not outright eliminated, and the business of government, the functionality that the U.S. polity was specifically designed for, needs to begin again. Indeed, the Obama presidency has to be seen in the light of a cyclical conflict in the history of American democracy and president who emerged to provide the transformative leadership that was necessary for moving forward.  During the Civil War, it was Abraham Lincoln, interestingly enough the subject of a recently released Spielberg film; during the Depression, it was the legendary Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who like Obama used the power of the federal government to lift the U.S. economy out of a massive slump caused by a poorly regulated corporate clique; and at the height of the civil rights movement, there was John F. Kennedy.

Today, it is Obama, the man for this particular season, since not only does America need clear leadership on the inside, but itself needs to provide transformative leadership in a world that is going through an economic depression, where the Arab spring has been a doubled-edged sword for the Middle East peace process, and where a globally ambitious China is going to need a strong partner and counterweight as it spreads its influence in America’s backyard.  The political leadership of the world is going to be led by the most apolitical politician the world has ever seen. I will be doing a series of piratical articles on President Obama for the next few months. Thanks again for your get well wishes.