The US election sent thinktanks into a frenzy of activity, pondering what Barack Obama’s victory could teach political parties on this side of the Atlantic and what ‘change’ it might bring to a range of policy areas.
The Fabian Society was on to the issue early, publishing a report by Will Straw and Nick Anstead on what Obama’s campaign could teach the Labour party. Yes We Can: How Lessons from America Should Change British Politics urged Labour to ‘change dramatically’ and become a 21st century campaigning force, learning from Obama’s campaign how to fuse ‘technology and trust to create a new movement of knowledge-empowered grass-roots activism and an explosion of small-dollar democracy’.
‘Barack Obama’s main insight has been that he can raise money from a huge number of people and get them to volunteer if he first asks and then lets them take control of their own role in the campaign,’ wrote Straw, an associate director at the Center for American Progress in Washington and regular Progress website columnist. ‘The technologies – whether direct emails, microtargeting models, telephone systems, or social networking tools – have been secondary to this principle.’
The Fabians also convened a conference in London days after the election to consider what an Obama presidency would mean for Europe. Sparks flew at a panel session on the president-elect’s foreign policy involving, among others, Shirley Williams, Time magazine’s Catherine Mayer and Dr Timothy Lynch of the Institute for the Study of the Americas. ‘I’ve been studying American history and politics for over 20 years now,’ said Dr Lynch. ‘Just to join the general mood of adulation, I never thought I’d live to see Gordon Brown win a byelection.’ This comment – alluding to the Glenrothes byelection that occurred the same week as the slightly more anticipated one across the pond – was met with much mirth.
While most of the panel believed that Obama’s inauguration would hail a new era of more considered and multilateral American foreign policy, Lynch disagreed. He controversially claimed the new president would ‘continue the imperialist endeavours that characterised previous administrations’. ‘A change of leaders is the joy of fools,’ he concluded, quoting a Romanian proverb to murmurs of agreement from some audience members, but not from his co-pannelists.
Across a transatlantic ideological divide from the Fabians, at the Adam Smith Institute, there was a more sober reaction to Obama’s victory. A blog post by the ASI’s Caroline Porter offered a note of realism, indicating that a small part of the world remained unmoved by Obamamania. ‘As Barack Obama tours the White House and entertains thoughts about life in Washington, one cannot help but wonder how he will face the economic shambles that will welcome him in January,’ she wrote, concluding that: ‘The whole world will be watching to see how well this beacon of hope and change will actually improve the dreary global financial scene.’
The dreary global financial scene has of course been another of the preoccupations in wonk world, as thinktanks from the left and right squabble over what caused the economic meltdown and what should be done to remedy it. While the free marketeers at the ASI watched uneasily as the government took stakes in banks, the new economics foundation (nef) saw nothing less than an opportunity to usher in a new way of doing economics.
‘In the ashes of the current crash lie important signs that a new economics is emerging,’ wrote its director Andrew Simms upon the publication of From the Ashes of the Crash: 20 First Steps from New Economics to Rebuild a Better Economy.
While nef’s policy proposals have in the past been dismissed by more conservative minds as unrealistic and unworkable, the nef may well find itself being taken more seriously now. ‘Because the state owns a large slice of the financial system, these are things we can do now,’ said Simms, just about managing to resist the urge to say: ‘we told you so’.