The Next American President

There is something unique the American Presidency that makes people want to believe in something good.

8 years ago, a poor farmer in rural Bangladesh, trekked on foot for hours just to hear a US President speak. ”For me, the most memorable event in my life was the day I walked seven miles and almost saw Bill Clinton,” he later said. Shortly before the event was to get take place it was canceled due to security concerns.

It is doubtful that this rural villager knew much about the politics of Bill Clinton. He wasn’t a member of the democratic party, in fact he probably didn’t know what meant to be one. He was there to see a symbol. A symbol of something good and hopeful.

But 8 years later, in a world transformed by terrorism and preemptive war, and in the age of American hubris and unilateralism, the image of the American President no longer conjures up symbolism of something good and hopeful. If you have traveled abroad since March of 2003 (the start of the Iraq War) then you know what I am talking about.

The 2008 election is a chance to fix what has gone astray. There is a clear choice to be made between two candidates. Each competent and worthy in their own way, either through personal biography, experience or oratory skills. Yet there is something different about the race for the White House this time around. While John McCain has focused on the small things - from William Ayers to coal. Barack Obama has taken up a campaign of big ideas. His campaign is as much about the renewal and optimism of America as Ronald Reagan’s “shinning city upon a hill” metaphor was during his 1980 race.

Obama is the first ‘Internet candidate’ in the same way that JFK was the first ‘television candidate.’ Maybe Obama’s ‘1960 Debate Moment’ came on youtube, in a video that was released by artist Will.i.am. Over 5 million people have watched it. The cost to the Obama campaign, $0.00. Around the same time that was released, Hillary Clinton bought one hour of TV time on the Hallmark Channel to host a town hall meeting, that amounted to an hour long commercial costing around $40,000.

Without the internet, Obama would not have raised $605 million dollars and certainly he would not be the democratic party nominee. That distinction would have gone to Mrs. Clinton. But there is an internet, and like we opined on Blogflict in December, the candidate that can harness it, can win the 2008 election.

New mediums of technology eventually find candidates who can use them to communicate effectively. Franklin Roosevelt did it with Radio. John Kennedy with Television. Now, Barack Obama joins that pantheon of communicators who used a new form of communication for political success. On election day, Obama will complete this trifecta of politicians who used new communicative tools to their advantage.

Consider this. On the Republican ticket there has been a Bush or a Dole for every national election since 1976 (that’s before the editor of Blogflict was born). Since 1988 we have had: Bush, Clinton, Clinton, Bush, Bush. The outcome of the last quarter century of American presidential politics hasn’t exactly been a call for change. Yet suddenly now both here and around the globe there is a palpable clamor for it.

Somewhere in an impoverished country a world away from the United States, someone is reading in a newspaper, or perhaps even browsing on an XO Laptop, about what is happening in race for the White House. On Tuesday night, (Wednesday morning their time), they will be refreshing website pages and reading with great excitement about the US election returns.

And already you can hear those thoughts creeping into the back of their heads, dreaming about the day they walk mile after mile to meet the next American President.

President Barack Obama.