Now it's showtime
The holiday season didn’t really end until this week. On Tuesday, January 20, 2009, the world dropped everything to celebrate a truly non-denominational holiday: the inauguration of President Barack Obama. Quite unusual for a politician to be celebrated, what more by Christians, Muslims and Jews alike. But obviously Barack Obama isn’t any normal politician. He is the darling of the world — one who can find stellar approval ratings wherever he goes on vacation. Kenya was one country particularly overjoyed by his unprecedented victory. There, babies named “Barack” are coming out of nowhere, and November 4, the date of Obama’s historic victory, is now a national holiday. Local newspapers in France, Britain and Germany are as enchanted by “Obamamania” as in America. Elsewhere, he has already become an icon for impressionable youths who were once convinced that today’s bad music, bad TV and bad leaders meant that they were born into an age of mediocrity. Everything else might still be mediocre, but Obama isn’t. In every conceivable nook and cranny, there are people looking for their own young, dynamic, messianic figure with a gift for public speaking and a Harvard Law School degree. So after all of this, I guess it didn’t matter much that Time magazine named him their “Person of the Year.” Never again in our lifetimes will we probably find someone so universally adored as Barack Obama.
But the Christmas decorations have been left up long enough. Even as one of those aforementioned “impressionable youths,” I have already removed the “OBAMA” stickers stuck on my school binder and learned to grow skeptical of all this “hope” and “change.” January 20 was the day when the icon was removed from his pedestal, and finally, became free to be looked upon by the public’s wary eye. It’s not that he’s any different now. By all means, he still has all the qualities of that great messianic figure of my generation. But he just shouldn’t be treated as one. Because as novel as the idea of a popular American president is, it is also a dangerous one.
It’s the public’s responsibility to keep their leaders in check, watch their every move and sound the alarm bells once something goes wrong. News outlets should be ready to expose; pundits should be ready to criticize; and cartoonists should be ready to draw unflattering caricatures complete with big ears and buck teeth. The public is the best check-and-balance arm of the state. Fear of plunging approval ratings keeps politicians on their toes, as well as reminds them who’s boss. You take that away and you invite the unbridled abuse of power that shouldn’t be in the hands of even Barack Obama. To admire a leader no matter what, wide-eyed, nodding your head to everything he says will get you to where we are now.
Israel stuck 1.5 million Palestinians into a narrow strip of land, sent in tanks and F-16s, flattened schools, hospitals and mosques, and killed over a thousand Palestinian civilians, with America’s implicit support. Yet Obama didn’t speak out against Israel’s atrocities in Gaza despite worldwide condemnation because he didn’t need to. Our somewhat fallen hero’s thinking was that the world’s love for him was guaranteed, so he could afford to skip on condemning America’s closest ally without losing anything. Sadly, he was right.
So end the idolatry now, please. If we, the international public, intend on surviving the next four years of Obama’s first term, then we should stop being starstruck by the guy for our own good. He is now the leader of the known world, not just another community organizer. There was once Barack Obama the icon. Now here’s Barack Obama the president. The first one was sacrosanct; this one isn’t. But that’s not to say that we should send him hate mail every week. We should treat him with dignity and respect. Just like we would any politician.
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For comments and suggestions, please e-mail me at levistel@gmail.com.
