2.1.2. One of the aspects of foreign politics
“About the current moment” №11(83), November 2008. Bureaucratic despair in Russia and global project “Obama” · перевод (English) · раздел 5 из 13
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2.1.2. One of the aspects of foreign politics
When on November 5 2008 the news of the election of Barack Hussein Obama for the president of the United States were announced, many TV-reports showed people celebrating on the streets not only in the USA but also Japan, Greece, UK, not even mentioning Kenya, where Obama’s father comes from. No other presidential victory caused such response before. In order to provoke ordinary people to go on the streets celebrating election of one or another candidate in presidential elections in foreign country, even if this country is the most economically and military powerful in the world - such people response takes special “psychological treatment” of the crowd.
Such sort of pro-Obama “psycho-treatment” of masses has not reached Russia and its population took the results of presidential elections rather neutrally. None the less, an unprecedented event took place in Russia: in the course of US presidential election campaign - 25000 of copies of a book were published and hit the stores - that was a book of then candidate, senator Barack Obama “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream”. Interesting that Russian edition of this book has the following line on its cover: A book from a man who can change America and the whole world” (those words “and the whole world” mean that Russia as a part of it is going to be changed as well). To our knowledge, never to this day a book or speeches or a monograph of an American presidential candidate or a president has been published in Russia in thousands of copies. However none of the speeches or publications of competing candidates (H. Clinton, J. McCain) have been printed in such quantities.
In the USA this book quickly became a best-seller according to “New York Times”, “Los Angeles Times”, “Washington Post”, “San Francisco Chronicle”. In general book answers the question why it was Obama who was chosen by American back-stage to win the elections, although neither now president nor other democrats and republicans could notice the fact of this “back-stage pre-election” for further strengthening in this position based on US “democratic procedures”
One of the West problems in doing politics after year 2000 consisted in the fact that western leaders looked quite pale comparing to Putin and were not able to produce in public polemics with him on difficult issues between Russia and the West. One of the causes for is in that Putin’s horizon is wider then mental outlook of western politicians and journalists, and his understanding of the world is a lot deeper. Because of this Putin was able to raise discussion and view virtually any question to a level that was unavailable to western politics and journalism because of either their limited worldview or psychological blocks.
That is why to look credible in their political relationship with Russia West needed to fins such politician that would have even wider horizon than Putin in his views on human history and regions, on politics - past, present and prospective- and who would be not a “desk-worm” but a true human with initiative and sincerity (at least when circumstances demand) required to be able to maintain dialog with different people, to understand their opinions and who earns respect to his persona for sounding his opinion on various issues of life in the USA and the world, who would be convincing in maintaining stability of American model of crowd-“elitarism”. And judging by “Audacity of hope” backstage powers of USA found this man in Barack Obama.
Without a doubt, this is just one of many aspect of the answer to the question “Why Obama?”. The other aspects consist in the fact that USA also has problems, partially rooted in local American specifics and partially in globalization, which USA do not manage, as well as any other country cannot manage it.
Barack Obama writes about many of such sort of problems and about some connections. And even if the book is written with support of speech-writers from his team, then not only they were “selling” Obama to the public like dumb puppet, but Obama with their help could express in the book his actual opinion on questions of life in the US and the world, their problems and those ideals that in his view had to come true for the good of people of USA and the whole world. And it was his book and his speeches that inspired and drawn crowds of voters: if none of it made sense to people Barack Obama would have lost the elections.
However the principle “everyone works for his own good to the extent of his own understanding, and for the good of others to the lack of thereof” works even for Obama. And it is obvious from his book - Obama himself is not on the required level of understanding the problems that he said he was ready to tackle. Precisely because of this American “back-stage management” gave him heads up for the elections… In other words Obama’s endorsement as the president of USA just seems as an indicator of growth and development of true democracy in biblical “crowd-elitarisme” of USA.
Due to the fact that neither Putin nor Medvedev have published such books we can only benchmark both of them on the basis of their public speeches. Such comparison is not in favor of the duo, but in Obama’s: topical spectrum of the book is a lot wider and deeper than subjects that Putin and Medvedev can discuss in their public speeches. In other words Barack Obama in his book goes into depths of the questions that both Putin and Medvedev have to avoid in public.