Across the pond

Went to bed early after walking the coastal path in blazing Spring sunshine. Was certainly not going to stay up half the night waiting for the result of the US election primaries. It was pretty clear, I thought, that even if Obama did not win both Ohio and Texas, he would not lose by much, so that his already established lead would ensure he was the clear winner for the Democratic nomination. March 4th was clearly going to go down in history as the day of Hillary Clinton’s last stand, even though she might admit it for another week or two.

Woke up at 3.15 AM with troublesome dreams. Not nightmares. Not spectacular and dramatic revelations but mundane trivia from the day. In the dream I am sitting at my computer, searching web pages to find the result of the primaries. I cannot find any details of the actual results, but whatever I key in the answer to the question is Clinton.

I decide that it is my unconscious mind playing tricks. I am far too sceptical to think that I have extraordinary powers of dream divination, that like Joseph I can dream the seven years of lean in the future, or like Carl Justav Jung, I can dream the start of the First World War. So instead of rushing downstairs and turning on News24, I turned over and went back to sleep.

Woke again at 7.05 AM. The same troubling dream was still in my mind. Downstairs and turned on Radio 4′s Today programme while I was making my first cup of tea. Someone was interviewing Britain’s Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, probing whether he was doing some sort of U-turn on the referendum on Europe issue. It was not until the news summary at 7.30 AM that the American results were reported. Then I knew for certain. Though no figures were given it was clear to me from the interviews that the race was wide open again. Hillary had done another New Hampshire, the comeback girl. And the battle for the Democratic nomination may not be settled for a few weeks yet.

This blog is not an analysis of the results; that, I will do later, when I have managed to discover the figures behind yesterday’s results.

This Presidential election is about the kind of dreams people have during the day. Obama has been outstandingly successful in appealing to the dreams of the nation’s youth. It is not only the media commentators who have been making comparisons with the 1960s, when John Fitzgerald Kennedy, captured the votes of the younger generation by his eloquent projection of the kind of country America could be, contrasting with boring reality of America as it then was under the presidency of the ageing Dwight Eisenhower.

And Obama projects himself as continuing the legacy of that other giant of the 1960s, Martin Luther King, whose speech, ‘I have a dream’      , delivered on 28 August 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, still has the power to move hearts and minds. Let me quote a paragraph.

‘I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.” I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able tot sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Missippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.’

Ninety per cent of King’s speech was about the plight of America’s blacks, but, as he made clear in the third paragraph, he was invoking a much wider vision; which has been frequently described by historians, as The American Dream, which has inspired Americans of every colour since the days of the Pilgrim Fathers. King said:

‘When the architects of  our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’

Those Brits and Europeans who have attacked Obama for encouraging a cult-like frenzy amongst his supporters, fail to understand, that what Obama is evoking is not the spirit of a lunatic fringe, but the very essence of the history of America. The spirit of incredible optimism, that seeks to establish a nation that never was, in contrast to the tyrannies of

Obama, although he is black, has repeatedly stressed he is not the candidate of the blacks. His appeal to unity is much wider. He is standing for election at a time, when a majority of Americans have begun to distrust the dream, when America is probably less popular in the world than it has ever been in my lifetime. The Bush regime’s attempt to police the world have brought that about. Despite Bush’s tour, the Middle East has erupted again, with Bush’s ally,

Whether Obama will win the American election is yet to be seen. But he is already making an impression on the world, although he has not yet embarked on any international tours. The London Times reported yesterday that a poll of its online readers showed a vote of 75 per cent for Obama and 25 per cent for Clinton. Just one, not very representative poll, but a huge margin.

In my view, it is now very clear, that Obama is not going to be stopped by allegations that he is swaying the emotions like a cult leader, or that he is a slave to the views of his own particular church, whose pastor apparently has some extreme fundamentalist views. His eloquence comes from the heart but he is ruled by his head. His appeal to the emotions is not in the least bit irrational. In our culture dreams are to be distrusted.

Change the language slightly. Obama is driven by a vision of the world that goes beyond the nitty gritty of policy issues.

As I write this, I realise, that as I wrote in a blog a few days ago, the more I read of this particular election, the more convinced I have become, that Obama is the best person to lead America. So if I make a psychological interpretation of my dream last night, it warns me that my unconscious is telling me that I should not be blinded by my own conscious thoughts.

Clinton still has the appeal to win votes. And her appeal, in the broad analysis of this blog, is clearly to American pragmatism. The distrust of big ideas. The wish to know, not only what candidates believe, but to base decisions on what they have actually done. How can you prove you can do what you say you are going to do? What’s your experience? How can you argue, Barack Obama, that you are going to fill the White House with excellent men and women of all political views, when one of your own my trusted advisers and fund raisers, Tony Rezo, is standing trial in Chicago on corruption charges?

So in my next blog, I will look at the pragmatics. What do the voting figures tell us about the likely result?