I may not be a betting person, but the fact that Obama won gives me an impeccable 100% win-loss record!
(See - I am betting on O)
For the past couple of weeks I have been watching/reading/thinking so much about the elections that Obama even came in my dreams.
It's a pity that like most of my dreams the details are hazy.
Much, maybe too much, has been written about the elections this time.
But you have to forgive the press for going into multiple 'raptures' as there were so many firsts. The first African-American to be president - with a Kenyan father and an itinerant mother, a young president - not even 50 - who speaks of hope and change and manages to move us.
When talking he seems to mean what he says and while listening the crowd seems to forget cynicism. A president (alright, a president-elect) who waxes lyrically about putting your hand on the "arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day".
A person who orchestrated the biggest grass root campaign, raising unheard of amounts over the net, but most importantly running what I consider a decent-beyond-blemish campaign.
All four of us were surfing channels the other day and I stopped at a news channel when I saw Obama speaking. It was the time when Palin was newly unveiled and Sarah-mania was slowly giving way to Sarah-bashing by way of vicious personal attacks.
A reporter presumably asked Obama about Palin's pregnant teenage daughter, Bristol.
Allowing the rare glimmer of anger to flash across his eyes for a nanosecond, Obama in a tone I haven't heard him use many times, said, "People's personal lives are off limits. People's children are especially off limits."
A tiny baby tear stung my eyes. After a quiet moment my father said, "Will they let this man become their President? I don't think so."
My father always maintained that America was too racist to vote for a black person to their highest office. They may say so in the opinion polls, they may declare it openly, but when alone in the voting booth, they will still put a tick across the white man’s name.
When only they are the purveyors of their actions, they will still choose the familiar over a change.
Though I thought that they had possibly transcended the race-issue, at least enough to hear the arguments someone is making, to see beyond skin, in my heart I was always doubtful that the American heartland (yeah, Palin's 'Real America') would ultimately sway McCain's way.
But sway they did not and voted Obama in with more than 50% of popular votes.
I often think back to see why this election meant so much to me.
Obama is not my President and though his policies might have an effect on me, it would be oblique.
Indian politics was something I followed, but not with any special passion.
Brand Obama - with his intelligence, promises and potential - was inpirational.
But I would like to think that it takes more than empty rhetoric to get my vote.
Maybe it was the year and half I spent in America that makes me feel closer to it. Maybe it was the many places I visited and people I spoke to that make me feel connected in a strange way to the outcome. Maybe it was just curiosity.
But whatever it was, I have always felt it was 'right' that Obama should get elected.
And I don't carry the race baggage that middle aged and old America carries.
I don't think that this is the mother of all affirmative actions which will magically right all the wrongs and erase race as an issue for all eternity. I don't feel the need to vote for Obama, hypothetically, just because he is black because somewhere there is a gnawing collective guilt that drones that after decades of slavery this is the least someone could do.
In the same way I don't think I will vote for a Mayawati just because she is a Dalit. While I understand the need for reservations and affirmative actions - in theory, I refuse to let what my long dead previous generations did make me feel guilty.
As a rough corollary, to sketch an Indian Obama, say if an IIT graduate who has a measure of the issues we are facing today and comes off as someone who can potentially deliver on what he says, I think many across the caste board would be willing to vote for him/her. This person being a Dalit or not will personally, and I think for at least most of the educated population, be a non-issue.
Maybe the reason why so many non-Americans across the globe claim a part of Obama's victory as their own is because he is our surrogate. A leader we haven't had and a change we hope to have.
Don't let me make you believe that I have become a certified lala land resident with my unabashed Obama praise! I worry too if he will deliver on all he promises. The fact that expectations from him are projected to be so high that they are punching ozone holes does not make his task any easier!
His supposed foreign policy and trade stances are already causing a flutter back home. Indo-US ties have historically been better when US has had Repulican governments. But I feel we need to give Obama atleast a couple of years to settle in and only then start rating his presidency.
Along the way I may not agree with everything Obama does or doesn't do, but I will always have confidence in his competence. I will always know that he would have paused to consider the implications of his actions.
The man after all has studied law in Harvard, authored 2 books (by himself, no ghosts), is a to-die-for husband and a perfect father.
And that by my definition is qualification enough to rule the world :-)
