Avuncular American

Obama - Left, Right, or Centrist?

Apologies to KCRW's radio program "Left, Right & Center," but the question has been on the minds of our European friends since November 4: where does Barack Obama fit on the ideological spectrum?

On a Belgian TV talk show last Sunday, I tried to put him in The Center.  Partly it was because there were both free market and socialist party representatives on the panel, both vying for the "we're closest to Obama" seat by categorizing him as either right or left of center.

The Socialist - a former minister who knows European trade union socialism and who would laugh at McCain-Palin attempts to paint Obama as a socialist or even a Marxist - knows that in the American firmament, the Democratic Party is about as left as it goes in the American mainstream.  And that's not left enough for him.

The "liberal" official (in Europe, "liberal" translates best as "free market") was comforted by President-elect Obama's inclusion of lots of Wall Street financiers and assorted capitalists in his team of economic advisers, on display at his first press conference a few days prior.  He too would snicker at the notion of Obama-as-Socialist.

Bill Clinton, in his rousing speech for Barack Obama in Florida days before the election, poured scorn on Republican attempts to create a "redistributionist" myth:

They just presided over the biggest redistribution of wealth upward since the 1920s and we all know how that ended. In the last eight years 90 percent of the gains went to 10 percent of the people over 40 percent to one percent. Can you run a great democracy that way? I don't think so. So don't tell me about redistribution.

But on TV last week, I insisted on situating Obama in the Center mainly because my Republican colleague was still fighting the election (we'd been in campaign debate mode so long it's no surprise that he had trouble adjusting to the new reality).  Here are my sound bites:

• The Republicans, especially in the Bush era, brought America so far to the Right that now we have to tack Left to bring the ship of state back to the Center;
• When you're looking from extreme Right field, even the Center is to your Left.

These might sound cute rendered into French for TV or radio audiences, but do they describe the Obama reality?  I consulted my wise Democrats Abroad Belgium colleague and fellow blogger, JP Bernbach, and tried out my "Centrist," even "Moderate" labels.  To which JP replied, "Barack Obama is above all a Pragmatist."

Which I like, I must say.  Americans are not really used to Left and Right, to the everlasting frustration of many on either wing.  Many Americans despair over the supposed sameness (which I don't really buy) of Republican and Democratic Parties, and many foreigners have to search hard to situate the two main US parties on the political spectrum.  A pragmatist, if that's what Obama is, searches for solutions to problems, and is less concerned with who has crafted the strategy than "can it work?"

Over the next weeks, the fight for Barack Obama's soul - well, maybe just his ear - will continue apace, between those who want him to hew a basically minimalist, business-as-usual course and those who want him to seize the historic moment and craft a new New Deal, 21st century-style.

So depending on your vantage point - from the Left, from the Right, or from overseas - when pondering how the future US president will govern, it should be comforting to most that he will do so from a "what works?" mind set.  After years of ideological governance, principled pragmatism looks like a beautiful thing.

"The Belgian Solution" to Leopold's Congo: 15 November 1908

Can't let this centenary pass unnoticed: 100 years ago today, King Leopold II's "personal property" of the Etat Independant du Congo became a Belgian colony.  This was the "Belgian Solution" that even human rights campaigners at the time saw as an improvement over the bloody personal rule by a sovereign who never set foot in his African domain, but who profited enormously from its rich natural resources. [Stamp image source: Congoposte.be, "Septante-sept ans d'histoire postale en Afrique centrale"]

The "Belgian Solution" to what had become a worldwide firestorm of protest against Leopold's rule was to last another half century, until Congolese independence in 1960.  Thousands of Belgians have roots in the Congo, and much of the country's wealth - certainly its store of mansions and monumental architecture built from the proceeds of mineral extraction and rubber plantations - dates from the "Congo Belge" era, whether under Leopold's personal rule or its time as a colony.

Leopold II's quarter century of direct rule over his "Congo Free State" saw the colony become, according to Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold's Ghosts, "one of the major killing grounds of modern times."  Statistics vary on the number of Congolese killed, starved, maimed, raped, or infected at the hands of the Belgians and their private/public militias, but Hochschild cites a figure used by a contemporary source, Mark Twain, at between 5 and 8 million people.

Consider that number, and then remember that "Africa's World War" in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC, which was known as Zaire in the Mobutu years) in the last decade has killed an estimated 3.8 million additional people.  Whatever the actual numbers, it is fair to say that in the century since Leopold first left his mark on the Congo, the legacy of colonization and its aftermath has been deadly for millions of Congolese.

But in today's Le Soir three page special on the centenary of Leopold's handover of his Congo Free State, there is still nostalgia among the former colons for their "lost paradise" (handover is too modest a term; after making a billion dollars from his exploitation of Congolese slave labor, Leopold II "sold" his personal colony to the Belgian state and was thanked for "his great sacrifices made for the Congo.")

You can get a sense of this Congo-Belge nostalgia in the pages of the "Union Royale Belge Pour les Pays d'Outre-Mer" UROME, which publishes a trilingual website (though it has an English link, the French appears the most complete).  The "good old days," when an ambitious young Belgian (or Luxembourger) might study "sciences coloniales" and head off on the two week steamer trip to a life of adventure in Belgium's African colonies of the Congo and "Ruanda-Urundi," today's Rwanda and Burundi.  Beyond pure nostalgia, Belgian history professor at V.U.B. Guy Vanthemsche provides some statistics on the legacy Belgium left independent Congo in today's La Libre Belgique.

A hundred years on from Congo's "graduation" from private royal fiefdom to full-fledged colony, and on to eventual independence and civil war, relations with the former colonial power are strained.  Belgium hosts thousands of Congolese immigrants, and there are still a few thousand Belgians in the DRC.  It's hard to say how things might have turned out for the Congo had its transition to independence been better prepared; as it happened, Belgium in the late Fifties and early Sixties could not resist the tide of independence sweeping Africa.

Congo, 1908-2008.  Plus ça change... Adam Hochschild, angry a couple of years ago that George W. Bush referred to having read his "Leopold's Ghosts" without seeing the right historical parallels, drew them for the President in an open letter in the Los Angeles Times:

The long effort by King Leopold II of Belgium to bring Congo under his control was driven by his avid quest for a commodity central to industry and transportation: rubber. Does that remind you of anything?

Hochschild saw the resource grab behind Bush's invasion of Iraq, just like Leopold cloaked his rape of the Congo in "philanthropic" terms.  For present-day Congo, it's no longer rubber, but a "coltan rush" and "blood tantalum" for our mobile phones that has the warlords killing and enslaving Congolese.  The "Scramble for Africa" continues.

Avuncular American's First Anniversary

With all the excitement over the elections in the States, I almost let the anniversary of my first year of blogging slip by.  Looking back at my first posts in November 2007, I see that I wrote a good deal more about Iraq than I have done recently (that is likely to change once Barack Obama is inaugurated).  There were several posts on the complicated Belgian political situation, which though it has calmed somewhat, remains complicated and never-ending.  It's the national sport.

One topic - torture, as in US practice of - is one that I would much prefer never having had to write about.  If today's article by Mark Benjamin in Salon is right - "Obama's Plans For Probing Bush Torture" - we may all be learning more about the truth behind Bush's assertion that "This government does not torture people."  In the past year of blogging, I've noticed that whenever I do a post about torture, much of my readership seems to fade away.  Denial?

During this strange post-election, lame duck, transition, phony war period, there will be plenty to write about.  Like many others who supported the candidacy of Barack Obama, I will be scrutinizing the news coming out of Transition HQ, to make sure that realpolitik does not trump the wishes of real people who elected the next president.

But the advent of a new, popularly elected administration, one which has to undo so much that harmed the very foundations of the United States, should account for a slight change of tone in the months ahead.  After all, "avuncular" is in my URL: "In the manner of an uncle, pertaining to an uncle, hence, kind, genial, benevolent or tolerant" according to Wiktionary.

I think Barack Obama should bring out the avuncular in me.

Obama and the Vote of New Americans

In the US, legal immigrants can, after a waiting period of 5 years, apply for "naturalization" to become US citizens.  Like the people at left (photo source: US Citizenship and Immigration Services), they take the oath and become citizens like their neighbors born in the United States.  But do they vote like their native-born fellow citizens?

Think of the choice this year: Senator Barack Obama, son of a Kenyan and a Kansan, first generation American who looks like, well, many of the people taking the oath, versus Senator John McCain, third generation military brat.  Beyond complexion, you have compelling stories: former POW in Vietnam versus son of single mother raised in Indonesia and Hawaii, with family members as far afield as Kenya.  With increasing numbers of hyphenated-Americans, Obama's story is very familiar.  In California alone, close to 300,000 people were sworn in this year.

Much has been said about how Barack Obama's stunning victory has been due to the black vote, the youth vote, the women's vote - all undoubtedly true.  But when the tallies are finalized and broken down, I'd be very interested in seeing the analysis of the vote of new Americans.  Naturalized Americans, along with Latino and Asian voters, have been estimated at some 15 million by the Center for Community Change.

"Change" means many things to many people, but to these new Americans from places as far apart as Azerbaijan and Zambia, Barack Obama's election is the best illustration of the hope that America still represents to the world. 

90 Years After Armistice, Europe Ponders "Force Noire"

Only a week ago, Americans by the millions were lining up to elect Barack Obama President of the United States.  Naturally, Europeans have been searching their souls ever since, asking if they too would be able to elect one of their millions of citizens of color to the highest office.  So today, 11 November 2008, 90 years after the Armistice that ended the First World War, my focus is on the millions of Commonwealth, Congolese, and French African soldiers who fought for their respective British, Belgian, and French colonial powers.

In Brussels, with its large Congolese community, today's gathering at "Riga Square Afrique" (poster on left) was symbolic: there is no "monument to the unknown Congolese soldier," though there probably should be.  Not only did soldiers from Belgium's largest African colony serve in both world wars, but Congo's huge mineral wealth (copper for shells and bullets, rubber for tires, etc.) served the Allied war effort.

Today we went to northern France, where hundreds of Muslim soldiers from regiments with romantic Beau Geste names like Tirailleurs Algériens and Régiment Mixte de Zouaves et Tirailleurs are buried in a hilltop cemetery at Notre Dame de Lorette, along with close to 40,000 of their Christian and Jewish comrades.  Why Notre Dame de Lorette?  We wanted to see this massive cemetery, where in April 2008 vandals had desecrated the Muslim soldiers' graves.  Thankfully, they have been restored to their pristine simplicity.  The inscription at right (click to enlarge) reads "Mohamed.  Mort pour la France."

For years, the contributions of soldiers from Europe's colonies had been, if not forgotten, relegated to annual commemorations like 11 November, when dwindling numbers of citizens visited the monuments of wars fought by their fathers, grandfathers, great grandfathers ... the links are becoming more tenuous.  For the Algerian, Moroccan, and Tunisian veterans of World War II, it took the Cannes success of French-Algerian film Indigènes ("Days of Glory") in 2006 to shame then-French President Jacques Chirac into extending benefits theretofore reserved for "Metropolitan" veterans.

It was always easier to honor the "colonials" (the "white" dominions of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, as well as those "cousins" from US) for their sacrifices for Mother Europe in the Great War and in World War II.  Today we also took in Vimy Ridge (click on photo below), hallowed Canadian soil overlooking France's coal mining basin near Arras.

Vimy is an amazing site, and generations of Canadians have flocked there to pay homage to their fallen, each one of whom is honored with a tree planted in the pock-marked soil.  There is also a discreet monument near the entrance to the Moroccan Division's dead.  As if to illustrate the magnet that it was for the disparate elements who came to France's defense, the Moroccan monument has plaques honoring Jewish, Armenian, Czech, Swedish volunteers.

Though their numbers were relatively small in the overall Great War scheme of things, France's black African troops - especially the Tirailleurs Senegalais - were considered shock troops, called by General Charles Mangin "la Force Noire."  Francophones might enjoy listening to a special radio broadcast from earlier today on France Inter on General Mangin and the use of black troops in World War One (I suggest skipping the first 15 minutes on the MP3 link, but the rest of the hour-long program has a very good discussion between two historians).  In which "cannon fodder" for some was simply, for Mangin and others, Africa's chance to repay France for having enjoyed the benefits of colonization.

In a way, it's unfortunate that the U.S. has transformed its commemoration of Armistice Day into Veterans Day, thereby losing the direct connection with the First World War (after all, we have Memorial Day in May for generic war remembrance).  For many African-Americans, WW I was transformational too: some 350,000 served in uniform, and many stayed on in Europe after the war, escaping from the still-virulent racism back home.

But whether in the US or Europe, much has changed since the days when

"Negroes or people of colour must not exercise any actual command or power"

... according to British Army manuals.  The BBC recently screened a documentary on Walter Tull, the first British officer of color, killed on the Somme in the Great War.

Today, "Force Noire" means much more than the capacity of black soldiers to scare the living daylights out of the Germans on the other side of No Man's Land.  We already have a French junior minister, Rama Yade, toying with the notion of becoming a "French Obama."  If black, Arab, and Muslim soldiers could shed their blood for their colonial masters, then it's perhaps more than overdue for their great grandchildren to get the votes of their fellow citizens.  Oui, on peut.

Enfranchising Americans: Yes, We Can Do Much Better

The joy throughout the United States and much of the world (with the exception, perhaps, of the Kremlin and parts of North Waziristan) at the election of Barack Obama was accompanied by this: relief.  Relief that Sarah Palin would not have to get trained on use of the nuclear codes.  Relief that voters clearly gave the Republican Party a collective boot after eight years of disastrous rule.  And relief that despite widespread lack of confidence in the machinery of US elections, a Democrat was able to rally a large enough turnout to make it to the White House.

President-Elect Barack Obama's victory - and that of House and Senate Democrats riding his "coattails" - was impressive, there is no doubt about it.  But how much bigger could it have been?  With a turnout of 62.8%, how many of the 37.2% who did not vote did so because they were simply lazy, completely apolitical, or were turned off by the choices on hand?  And how many of the tens of millions of non-voters would have voted, had they not been discouraged or disenfranchised?

Consider:

• At least 5.3 million citizens with felony convictions (with the exception of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens) lost their vote.  According to Demos, "The United States is the only democracy in the world that takes the vote away from citizens who have completed their sentences."
• In states like Indiana, where voters must produce a driver's license, 673,926 or 14.7% of the potential electorate have no license.  Though Obama won Indiana by 0.9% (some 25,000 votes), how much wider could his margin have been had this requirement not been in effect?  See Andrew Hacker's discussion of the 2005 law's "disparate racial impact" in his New York Review of Books article, "Obama: The Price of Being Black."
• Sheer confusion.  From London's Daily Mail on November 5: Some became so tired of waiting that they simply gave up and went home, while others left because they had to return to work or to care for their families. For many who reached the ballot box, the process of voting was so bewildering that they took an eternity to make their choice from a hefty ballot sheet that included votes for, as well as the president, congressional lawmakers, local officials and a myriad of legislative proposals.
  
• Sheer confusion, cont'd: Alternet has a minute-by-minute nationwide catalog of voting snafus, which they updated as voting continued into the night of November 4.

Right to vote, "convenience voting," or obligation to vote?

A couple of days before the election, I received from John McCain an email starting off "My friend" (it's a long story, but somebody put me on his mailing list, and it was impossible to take myself off).  Anyway, Senator McCain said this: "I ask that you never forget that much has been sacrificed to protect our right to vote."

The sentence is in bold letters in his email, so it must be important to him.  But does Senator McCain's party share his commitment to Americans' right to vote?  The contrary appears to be true.

Think of the Bush Administration's politically-driven Justice Department under Alberto Gonzales.  Wrote Scott Horton, prophetically, in Harper's September 2007:

The G.O.P./DOJ plan is simple: the fewer voters the better. In particular they would like to see voter rolls purged where Democratic registration is strong and Republican registration is weak. This process will eliminate some duplicate or improper registrations. It will also disenfranchise thousands of legitimate, properly registered voters who will show up on Election Day to vote and discover that their names no longer appear on the rolls. And a disproportionate portion of these voters will be Black, Latino, or residents of precincts which have a suspicious habit of supporting Democrats. The G.O.P./DOJ view is apparently that these voters are the enemy.

"The enemy."  If they mean that the majority of Americans - if they were truly encouraged to vote and allowed to vote - would vote Democratic, then maybe the GOP is right to consider "the real America" enemy territory.  That's why voter registration efforts are often condemned as leading to "voter fraud," and why voter suppression efforts are almost always linked to the Republican Party.  Check the nonprofit research group Issue Lab for a series of reports on how voter suppression has become the modus operandi of the Republican Party.

This basic dichotomy in American democracy - "Voters: the more the better" vs. "Voters: but only those you can trust to vote your way" - plays out in so many different ways at the local level (the nation's 3,000 plus counties who get to set the rules and establish the voting systems in their jurisdiction).

Eric Black, writing recently in MinnPost and quoting Curtis Gans of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate (CSAE), questioned the efficacy of "convenience voting systems" in increasing voter turnout. Gans slightly underestimated the turnout for last Tuesday's election, but his analysis of the impact of convenience voting ("no-excuse absentee voting," early voting, and "Same Day Registration") is worth consideration as we look to increasing voter turnout beyond the respectable - but not historically high - 2008 figures.

For my money, I like recent proposals floated in the blogosphere by Kevin Drum, Matt Yglesias, and Rick Hasen.  Federalize Federal elections, put registration in the hands of the government, and issue Federal I.D. cards.  And I would add: making voting mandatory, like it is in many European democracies, and scheduling election day on a weekend, not Tuesday, when millions of employees dare not take any time off for their civic duty.

I had to beg to get my ballot this year, and I'm not even sure my vote was recorded.  I would gladly surrender the right to have my registration transferred out of the hands of Broward County Florida, which, after hanging chads of 2000, missing absentee ballots of 2002, managed this year to jeopardize 60,000 absentee ballots by labeling the outer envelope with the voter's party affiliation.  As the local rag put it:  this was "the election equivalent of a “Kick Me” sign that some mischievous kid tapes to your back."  Jesus wept.

Give Presidential elections to the Feds.  They're too important to entrust to the locals.

(free Obama "Yes We Did" sticker: MoveOn.org)

Brussels Memo To U.S. President-Elect

TO:            Obama Transition Team
FROM:        European Think Tank on November 5
SUBJECT:    Prospects for Transatlantic Relations

Within hours of John McCain's concession speech, a collection of senior EU officials, academics, journalists, and diplomats met at Brussels' EU Regional Office of the Heinrich Boll Stiftung (motto: "Meddling is the only way to stay relevant") to discuss the outcome of the US elections.  When it was originally scheduled, the winner was still an open question, but Barack Obama's healthy win made the group's focus much easier.  Europe will now be dealing with a Democratic Obama Administration.

Chatham House non-attribution rules applied, so I will give a sense of the group's thinking without identifying individuals.  Here are some highlights:

• The "Real America" is much more moderate than that of Sarah Palin; Republicans were out of touch with the electorate;
• The "symbolism" of a US president of color will strengthen American soft power;
• Obama's strong mandate will enhance his Administration's legitimacy;
• Europe now has an interlocutor; it will be easier to work with the US, but Europe must speak with one voice.

The participants were painfully aware of Europe's problems with the latter, in light of the stalemate on the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, which would give the EU a new institutional framework and a visible "Presidency" with which to engage the world.

European realists took the election of Barack Obama with a certain equanimity, compared to the wild enthusiasm of the crowds the night before.  "Will they still be cheering in 6 months?" questioned one.  However, they generally see this huge difference between Bush/Cheney and Obama/Biden: the latter do not fear the outside world.  They will engage with Europe and the world to further American interests, but not in the exclusively unilateral way that exasperated everyone these last eight years.  Get ready, if not for multilateralism, at least "plurilateralism."  An open-minded Obama Administration would disarm much of the anti-US sentiment that grew in the Bush years, making it more difficult for certain European leaders to "tap into" anti-Americanism for their own electoral or tactical reasons.

Free traders worry about Democrats' populist tendencies, but console themselves by saying that as President with something short of a filibuster-proof Senate majority, Obama would have to "govern from the center."  But European thinkers warn that Barack Obama's plans for stepped-up prosecution of the war in Afghanistan against the Taliban will be a hard sell: European publics are reluctant to expand the NATO effort, and "burden-sharing" arguments - if limited to strictly military contributions - will meet resistance.  Europeans already have some 70,000 "boots on the ground" in a variety of deployments on several continents, and will be quick to retort that the US needs to share more of the development assistance burden worldwide.

Not to speak of the climate change burden.  "He's from Illinois," said someone to explain Obama's record on coal and ethanol, and his (symbolic) vote against Kyoto while in the Illinois State Senate.  But they take solace from his embrace of the challenge of developing alternative energy resources, and from his ability to appoint serious enforcement officials early on at the EPA and other agencies.

Yesterday's conference ended before news broke of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's post-election nasty-gram announcement involving missiles on Europe's border.  On prospects for NATO expansion, especially Georgian prospects for membership, participants noted that Obama was less antagonistic toward Russia than McCain.  Europe, heading into another winter still very much dependent on imports of Russian gas, is clearly less eager than the Bush Administration to extend Article 5 common defense guarantees to Georgia. Obama's August 2008 support for Georgia's NATO MAP (Membership Action Plan) was couched in terms of "deepening relations between Georgia and transatlantic institutions," the noncommittal nebulousness of which neatly coincides with the prevailing European view.

French ambitions to reform European defense arrangements and to rejoin NATO's integrated military command, in the view of this group, present a new Obama administration an opportunity to redress damage caused by US rejection of French overtures in the Clinton years.

In all, the mood was relaxed, hopeful, and perhaps relieved that Europeans would not have to explain what it is all about to a foreign affairs ingenue like Sarah (Africa is a continent, not a country) Palin.  They will be dealing with foreign affairs veteran Joseph Biden and fellow Senate Foreign Relations committee alum President Obama who has a natural constituency of good will in Europe from day one.  There are willing interlocutors here, and though they know that Obama will strongly defend American interests, they see Europe's opportunity in making those interests mutual.

The Pride of America, The Joy of the World

Turning on the BBC this morning after a very short sleep, John McCain's voice provided the good news (from The Telegraph):

I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him but offering our next president our goodwill and earnest effort to find ways to come together.  Whatever our differences, we are fellow Americans.

With that, the incredible journey of Barack Obama to the White House became fact.  John McCain ended his campaign in a very honorable way; francophones would call it "très fair-play."  Now the challenge will be to enlist him and his supporters in the monumental task of rebuilding America after the lost Bush years.

TV audiences saw the emotion on the faces of the hundreds of thousands of Americans gathering in Chicago, Washington, and in lots of small towns across the country.  Joy, hope, pride, relief.

Last night a few thousand of us gathered in Brussels for an election-eve party - expat Americans, Belgians, but also people from every corner of the international diaspora present in Europe's capital.  My job as the "Obama cheerleader" (debate would be too dignified a term for our performance in front of such a crowd) was made easier by the numbers; Obama's landslide in the US looked mild compared to the overwhelming support he had in the hotel ballroom last night.

The after-action interviews of us expat Americans will soon taper off, and the brainstorming now begins: later today I will attend one of what will be many sessions in European and other capitals on prospects for renewal of American ties with the world under an Obama Administration.  My plan: go into Obama mode: listen to my European hosts - Green think tank The Heinrich Boll Foundation - and hear what they prescribe for bringing the United States into the fold of countries seeking solutions to the world's grave environmental problems of climate change and resource constriction.

Wonkiness will abound, and I will be as active a participant as my couple hours' sleep permits.  But my heart will be in places like Chicago - or Nairobi, where Barack Obama's victory has been declared a national holiday.  It's party time.

I don't care if some commentators want to downplay the Obama-JFK connection.  For millions in the US and around the world, Barack Obama's election to the US Presidency surpasses the historical milestone of Irish Catholic Kennedy's election in 1960.

In my parents' native Ireland, for years thousands of homes sported photos of a sort of holy trinity: the Pope (whoever he was at the time), hero of Irish independence Michael Collins, and President John F. Kennedy.  I expect that President Barack Obama's portrait will be ubiquitous - and not just in Kenya - in simple homes the world over for a long time to come.

And birth registries throughout the world: get ready for a deluge of little ones named Barack!

(photo: Bridges For Obama)

Hope May Not Be A Plan, But It Sure Beats Fear

You hold the key to love and fear
All in your trembling hand
Just one key unlocks them both
It's there at your command

"Get Together," The Youngbloods, 1967

You can hear it on the great "Forrest Gump" soundtrack, this call for brotherhood that Clear Channel Communications tried to ban after September 11 from its 1,200 radio stations, along with other songs that were "lyrically questionable."

You're probably not going to hear the song at any John McCain - Sarah Palin rallies, where fear is the order of the day.  You know the mood is mean when Senator Arlen Specter, considered a "moderate" Republican, openly touts the Bradley Effect as a McCain secret weapon:

There are a "couple of hidden factors" in this election, said Specter. "The first is that people answer pollsters one way, but in the secrecy of the ballot booth, vote the other way."

As Rebecca Traister says in her "McCain Gets Mean" report from Pennsylvania today in Salon.com, here is Specter "crossing his fingers and hoping for racism."  This is exactly what Europeans fear about Tuesday's election.  I am more concerned about polling place confusion, accidental or planned.

I have been in overdrive the past couple of weeks, helping spread the word on Barack Obama to radio, TV, and press audiences in Brussels.  My wife has, in her words, become an "Obama widow."

Not that Obama needs any help over here: about the only European political parties that are against him are on the racist extreme right.  Today on Belgian TV, socialists and free-marketeers were united in wishing for an Obama victory.  Everyone wants a clean break with the party of George W. Bush.  But in my debate mode, enumerating Obama's and the Democrats' strong points on foreign policy and the economy, I think that I am neglecting the key factor in why his campaign has caught fire. Hope.

"Hope Is Not A Method" is an excellent 1996 "business" book by retired Army Chief of Staff General Gordon Sullivan and Michael Harper.  I fully subscribe to the General's counsel, as would Barack Obama.  But while hope alone will not bring America out of its Hobbsian obsession with fear, it serves as a nice capstone to why the Obama campaign has captured the imagination of America and the world.

I fully expect the McCain - and especially Palin - camp to continue their hammering on the theme of fear, whatever the outcome on Tuesday.  If elected (which I certainly do not wish for), their administration would be a Bush/Cheney fear-fest on steroids.  In opposition, they will feed the right-wing talk radio circuit, now abetted by thousands of internet crazies, busily concocting videos proving that Barack Obama is [fill in the blank for whatever makes people most fearful].  Bill Clinton put up with the crazy fringe for his entire eight years in office.  What he had to endure will probably seem tame compared to the frenzy provoked by the thought of an Obama Administration.

Meanwhile, in the real America that just might elect Barack Obama president, hope will be rekindled.  Hope that America can once again urge countries to respect human rights without fear of ridicule, and without dictators justifying their torture by citing George W. Bush's caveats.  Hope that America's economic well-being will not be jeopardized by Wall Street sharks who take their bonuses and run.  Hope that freedoms won by generations of sacrifice will not be trampled by leaders who divide in order to rule.

Last month in the Washington Post, columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. wrote about the 2008 Presidential campaign in terms of hope and fear.  He reminded us that in 1932, Herbert Hoover tried to "sow fear and panic" about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, just like McCain/Palin are trying to do now with Barack Obama.  If you are wondering how the Depression might have panned out under a re-elected Hoover, check out the McCain Spending Freeze solution.

"You hold the key to love and fear, All in your trembling hand.  Just one key unlocks them both, It's there at your command." The key is a vote for Obama.  A return to Constitutional governance, a 21st century New Green Deal in the wake of a 1929-like meltdown, and an engagement with the world from a vantage point that does not look down the barrel of a gun.  No, he's not the Second Coming.  But he may be the last, best chance in a long while that America has to redeem its good name and to recover its spirit.  No need to be afraid of that.