I am a Bangladeshi living in the UK. Although I've followed the 2008 election campaign mostly from the sidelines, I read the election diaries on dKos daily with complete and utter fascination. My friends find my interest (or even obsession) with American politics to be a curious quirk. To one of them, I explained it thus - America is still the most important country in the world. Through its power of example and leadership, it has the capacity to transform the world in any direction it chooses. What happens therefore in American politics should concern not just Americans, but really the rest of the world as well.
The power of American leadership
If Americans become a bunch of tree-hugging hippies and embrace wholeheartedly the causes of environmentalism and climate change, then that inspires other nations to think more seriously and start doing more about it. If Americans lay down an immovable marker for peace among Arabs and Jews, then there is no better chance of resolving that particular long-running conflict. If America stands four-square behind the fight against AIDS in the developing world, governments throughout Asia and Africa can take heart and tackle this problem with a new spring in their step.
I grew up in Dhaka watching American TV and I watched as two-thirds of my high school class left for the US after graduation. Even when I started college, there were about half a dozen people who left for America in the fall after they had already finished the first semester (spring).
I waited until I was ready to do my Master's degree before shipping to Texas. On the other hand, my cousin and her husband, both with no more than a community college education, won the US visa lottery a few years ago. They moved to New York soon after. In spite of all the heartache involved in their separation from home and their kids' loss of language and identity, they love it out there. They have just bought their first home in Queens.
What I am trying to say is that the powerful pull that America has over the entire developing world is a thing of marvel. And I suspect it remains undiminished even after 8 years of George Bush abusing his office, his country and the rest of the world. Governments still naturally look to America for leadership, and the common people certainly still think of America as a kind of 'paradise on earth'. In vast swathes of this planet, those four syllables A-ME-RI-CA are the final embodiment of a wealthy, comfortable and contented human society. A leftover dream from the 50s or the 80s, you might say? Perhaps. But the dream survives.
My journeys in the USA, real and virtual
My personal knowledge and love of America comes primarily from a three-year stay between 2000 and 2003. I lived in Indiana and then for a long time in north Texas (Denton to be exact). That journey of wonder and love which transformed into fear and despair is chronicled in an earlier diary entry here.
I joined Daily Kos during the Kerry election campaign, although I'd been reading Kos since the beginning of 2004, from the time of the screw'em controversy. Those were the early days of the blogosphere and I had Josh Marshall, Atrios, Billmon (and even Matt Yglesias!) in my bookmark list. In fact, I first read about Barack Obama in a dKos diary.
Because of the time difference with the UK, I missed the Boston convention speech that was Obama's coming-out party. I woke up the next morning and jumped on to C-SPAN's website. 20 minutes later, at the end of the speech, I was shaking like a leaf. It would be no exaggeration to say that in all my 28 years, I had never experienced a political moment that was remotely as powerful as that.
For a distant Bangladeshi to be struck so deeply to his core by what an American politician had to say - I recognized that as something special. I thought about his words that whole day, I wrote about the speech in my own blog, I forwarded the video to as many friends as I could, and even now when friends come to my place, I regard them as a captive audience and say to them "I gotta show you something". I then proceed to show them the YouTube video of the Boston speech. Whether the viewer is from Jamaica or Pakistan or Bangladesh, it never fails to impress them or even move them.
I have immense respect for John Edwards. I work in the financial markets in London, and the wanton destruction of the American economy through this subprime mess is something I've had to follow pretty closely for over a year now. It's depressing how the unbridled power of corporations can end up screwing millions of people who were guilty of little more than naivete or gullibility. And yet what a high price they've had to pay. The chill winds of the subprime crisis, followed up by the credit crunch, now threaten to sink global prosperity for the next 2-3 years. The hard times are going to be especially hard in the UK, whose fortunes are so closely tied to the US economy.
And yet there is no sweeping campaign for reform. There is no movement to punish these corporates, no movement to bring them to justice, no demand to make them accountable for their white-collar crimes. The impunity granted to them so far is astonishing. Instead you have Alan Greenspan making lame excuses that you can't really foresee asset-price bubbles - this from the man who created not one but TWO of them in rapid succession! Instead you have captains of commerce threatening populist candidates on the eve of the New Hampshire primary. The sheer fucking gall of these people is breathtaking, and no one has promised to bring these assholes more into line than John Edwards. The economy has been raped for far too long, and I really do believe that a populist backlash is coming, something that will evolve over the next 10-20 years. The very basis of American capitalism as it stands today will come under threat if something is not done about it and soon.
But as much as I admire John Edwards, I have an entirely different order of regard and even love for Barack Obama. It dates back from Boston. And although I sincerely hope he'll marry some 'beef' to his rhetorical flights before SC and NV, I for one would never wish for him to abandon his soul-stirring words for a plain laundry list of policy proposals. No other politician can inspire this generation as much. Certainly not the corrupt bunch of crackpots in my own country Bangladesh. In the UK, the only one who came close in terms of rhetoric would be Tony Blair but even he was really a fake and smarmy robot - Phony Tony as some people called him was exactly the right epithet.
Presidents abroad - a personal history from Reagan to Dubya
Americans of course will elect their own leader for their own reasons - be it Edwards, Obama, Clinton or even some lurid Republican. The purpose of my diary is simply to set out how America influences the rest of the world, and how an American president is viewed outside your borders.
The first president I remember is Ronald Reagan. One of my earliest childhood memories is from January 1980. The Bangladesh Observer is slipped under the door of our small-town home, and the front page is emblazoned with the grinning mug of Ronnie - 'Reagan sworn in as 40th American president', says the headline. That was his image for the next 8 years - the smiling sunny face. Even my mother, who knows nothing about US politics except the names of the prez and the first lady, would say - "that Ronald Reagan, he is a handsome man!" In spite of the Libya bombings etc, Reagan was well-regarded in my corner of the world, particularly for his high-profile meetings with Mikhail Gorbachev throughout the 80s. Those nuclear truce talks made headline news throughout the world.
George Bush the senior was the first president I remember who managed to become really unpopular in South Asia. This was a result of the first Iraq war. As misguided as their sympathy was, people felt very strongly about Iraq being overrun by American troops, and Saddam T-shirts made their first appearance in 1990-91. Bush was hated, although when I asked my dad why he wasn't equally angry over Saddam invading another Muslim country Kuwait, he would usually grumble, tell me to shut up and go to my room and study.
Bill Clinton came next. This guy was a great advertisement for America, and Bill and Hill were especially popular in Bangladesh for their ceaseless championing of Dr Yunus, the Nobel-winning Bangladeshi economist. The Clintons picked up on Grameen Bank's pioneering work with the poor when they were in the governor's mansion in Little Rock. They have remained fans of the good doctor ever since. Hillary Clinton visited Bangladesh during the 1990s to see Dr Yunus' projects on the ground. As a result, her name recognition over there is particularly strong. When Bill Clinton came to Dhaka - the first sitting American president to visit Bangladesh - I remember the entire city shut down! (On the contrary, Dick Cheney went to Bangladesh as defence secy and again as boss of Halliburton, but I think he was mainly there to arm-twist us about our natural gas deposits).
Dubya's reputation needs no exposition. This man is hated and derided abroad as no other leader in history. His poisonous touch has singlehandedly turned America into an unattractive, unfriendly place although those who know the country intimately know how false that image is. For the last three years, I have gone back every spring to my old haunts in Dallas, and every time I have wished that the old pre-9/11 America would somehow be restored. Can man restore what man has taken away?
How Obama would 'play in Peshawar'
I believe that Obama could be the man to restore that lost lustre. John Edwards is a great man, but for most of the rest of the world, he would be another white man, largely indistinguishable (at least prima facie) from the long line of white men who preceded him. Same goes for all the Repubs.
But Obama? I can just about imagine the soaring headlines from Cairo to Calcutta, from Dhaka to Dubai the day after he is inaugurated. In one stroke, his ascendancy to the White House would transform America's global image.
Right now, America is feared and distrusted and Bush is the public, embarrassing face of that dark side. But a man like Obama? His election would send out a brand-new signal, one never heard before. The message received would read - "the leader of the free world is really one of us". It would mark the beginning of a new dynamic, especally with the developing world. People everywhere would "relate" to America on a much more sincere, empathetic and respectful level, simply because they can identify themselves with the man at the top. I can even imagine people abroad instinctively jumping to the defence of the US president if he is criticized too much. What a change that would be!
An Obama can disarm the hostility of the past decade, an Obama can quickly draw out the poisons spread abroad by Bush. It would be a fresh start with a fresh face. Because of the respect that Obama manages to accord people around him, I believe it would mark an overdue transformation of international relations. This is something that we need badly at a time when mutual cooperation is needed to tackle global crises. It is also necessary when a dictator like Putin is resurgent and becomes Time's man of the year. Imagine the contrast between Putin and Obama as Man of the Year, his face emblazoned on Time magazine covers in every newsstall in the world. An instructive contrast.
In my own country, people still use the old-fashioned word Negro (without prejudice and without any understanding of its current Western connotations) to describe the race of great Americans like Muhammad Ali. They may also use the word Kala or black. (No one really knows the phrase African-American.) Just as Ali is universally loved in my part of the world, the first "Negro president" of the USA would also inspire such devotion and loyalty, even if it may not reach the same intensity as Ali's. Obama would make the USA a place to look up to again.
And the entire continent of Africa would stand to gain a great psychological boost, that one of their sons had become the leader of the free world. Had made it to the top of a society still scarred with the wounds of race. What this can do for African confidence and development, I leave to the imagination. Even if people don't know about him now, Obama represents the chance of a lifetime for people in the developing world. His would be an example like no other.
The last word is yours
The last word remains with Americans. They will decide who they want, and for their own good reasons. I have great admiration for Edwards and even the people of my country love the Clintons. But I would love to see in my lifetime a minority president of the USA, someone to inspire the whole world.
The president of the USA is often called the leader of the free world. If Obama makes it to the White House, you can drop the 'free' and call him the leader of the world, period.
I tried to donate but the rules don't allow a non-citizen. I would gladly have done so because these elections affect not just my future but the future of my unborn children. If you can do so, please donate here. God bless you all.