A year ago tonight, I was in Grant Park, Chicago. Through tears, I watched as Barack Obama pledged to speak for ‘young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, hispanic, asian, native American, gay, straight, disabled and not-disabled – Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states; we are and always will be the United States of America’.
There was always something unreal about that balmy November night, and a year on many of those promises and those hopes may still seem like a far off dream. Politically, America remains polarised. Only one senator from a red state – Maine’s Olympia Snowe – has voted in favour of expanding healthcare to cover the 47 million uninsured Americans. Right wing blogs and campaign groups have been vitriolic in their opposition to reform, with Obama summarily branded a fascist, a socialist, a Nazi and a granny killer, just for pitching a public healthcare option. The debate – if you can call it that – has been strictly ideological.
Meanwhile, those who believed that Obama’s election signalled the dawn of a new, post-racial America remain sorely disappointed. In July, a black Harvard professor was arrested for trying to break into his own home after he was locked out, provoking another dispute about racial profiling, and the President himself has been called by Fox News’ Glenn Beck ‘a guy who has a deep seated hatred for white people or white culture…this guy is, I believe, a racist’.
The President has also faced criticism from abroad, from those who see too little change to America’s conduct with the rest of the world. The war in Afghanistan has intensified and is spilling over into Pakistan, violence continues anew in Iraq and in spite of the symbolic announcement that it would be closed on that first day, Guantanamo Bay continues to imprison people outside of habeas corpus.
In reality, of course, president Obama has made remarkable strides in what is still a very short amount of time and under impossible circumstances of expectation and economy. Moreo
ver, he is spending his political capital on the issues he campaigned on and the issues that matter to America. Some of these problems were seemingly intractable a year ago. Today, they are being confronted head-on.
He has wielded his progressive mandate with great timing and alacrity: 40% of the $789bn Recovery Act went directly into the pockets of working class families in tax cuts and 30,000 loans for small businesses; unemployment benefits were both increased and expanded to reach the 12 million people worst hit by the recession; 250,000 jobs were saved in the public sector; subsidised health insurance was made 65% cheaper to ensure it would continue to cover low-earners; new jobs were created with the biggest investment in infrastructure since the building of the inter-state highways in the 1950s; and there was the largest investment in education in American history.
Meanwhile, the ban on stem cell research has been lifted; new policy is for the first time focussing on decreasing carbon emissions from all vehicles bought in America; the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act has enshrined equal pay into law; and Obama has promised to end Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. He is the first president to take climate change seriously, he is reaffirming alliances in the world’s most difficult hotspots – in Russia, North Korea and the Middle East – and he is working towards a two-state solution to a centuries old conflict in his first months, rather than his last.
No one had higher hopes of the Obama presidency than I do, still. Perhaps my emotional and personal connection to his campaign means I will always look at his presidency through those same glazed eyes that watched on this day a year ago. But perhaps those who are so keen to be first to pen Obama’s eulogy – those who are so eager to say I told you so – should wait another year or three before writing him off, and give him due credit for the vast achievements already earned.