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.In 2008, theymade up 26 per cent.Turnout among young voters was widely expected to risein 2008, but the increase from 2004 was negligible.However,voters from 18 to 29 voted overwhelmingly for Obama (66per cent to McCain s 31 per cent).Younger voters are moresupportive of activist government and oppose the war inIraq.A third of this age group call themselves liberals.179These voting groups form the basis for a progressiveDemocratic majority.A poll conducted by the Campaignfor America s Future and Democracy Corps on the eveof the election found that moderates joined with liberalsto form a majority that marginalized conservatives.Bysubstantial margins, both liberals and moderates supportgovernment regulation, public investment and allianceswith other nations instead of military solutions to nationalsecurity issues.180Even conservatives agree with this analysis.MitchMcConnell, Republican from Kentucky and Senate minor-ity leader, lamented to the Republican National Committeeshortly after Obama s inauguration,  The Republican Partyseems to be slipping into a position of being more of aregional party than a national one. He put the party sminority status in stark terms. You can walk from Canada105 Obama s Americato Mexico and from Maine to Arizona without ever leavinga state with a Democratic governor.Not a single Republicansenator represents the tens of millions of Americans on theWest Coast.And on the East Coast, you can drive fromNorth Carolina to New Hampshire without touching asingle state in between that has a Republican in the U.S.Senate. Many moderate Republicans had lost their seats inCongress in the 2008 election, so McConnell s solution tothe Republican dilemma was not surprising.He called onhis fellow party members to make a better effort at commu-nicating Republican principles instead of changing them, assome Republicans have advocated.181In their study of progressive change in the 1960s, G.Calvin Mackenzie and Robert Weisbrot go against con-ventional wisdom, which tends to attribute change in thattumultuous decade to protest movements and the counter-culture.They mount an argument that  the dissidents andpoliticians were in this together and that  it was often thevery targets of [the protesters ] wrath  the institutions ofnational politics and the politicians and bureaucrats whoinhabited them  that produced the social and economicchanges that have become the deep and enduring legacy ofthe 1960s. 182Politics in the 1960s was, in their view, not simply abottom up or for that matter a top down enterprise, butrather the product of a symbiotic relationship betweengrassroots movements and those in government.Togetherthey produced a  liberal hour that, however short-lived,transformed American society.Obama came out of a grassroots movement to becomethe first African American president of the US.He hasattempted to bring the tactics he learned as a communityorganizer in Chicago to the task of organizing America forsubstantive change.The question is whether President Barack Obama will beable to sustain the symbiotic relationship he has attempted106 Networksto forge between the grassroots who helped elect him andthe government he is now in charge of.The election of 2008was both a repudiation of the Bush administration as wellas a longing for change.It does not in and of itself consti-tute a realignment of the American political landscape,even though there is evidence that the nation is trendingleftward.However, if Obama succeeds in implementing hisown version of the New Deal with the support and, overtime, the expansion of the emerging Democratic major-ity, he may well go down in history as a transformativepresident.107 Part TwoObama s World 4At Home in the WorldThe US from the outsideEven at this early stage of Obama s presidency, the bareoutline of an Obama Doctrine, defined as a coherent world-view informing the formulation of a twenty-first-centuryforeign policy, is discernible.It can be traced back toObama s formative years and is linked with the develop-ment of his identity.Obama himself has often made the connection betweenhis life story and his foreign policy views.In an interviewwith James Traub published one year to the day before theelection of 2008, Obama made a point of explaining how hisbiography could make a difference in the way the US wasperceived around the globe.I think that if you can tell people,  We have a president inthe White House who still has a grandmother living in ahut on the shores of Lake Victoria and has a sister who shalf-Indonesian, married to a Chinese-Canadian, thenthey re going to think that he may have a better senseof what s going on in our lives and in our country.Andthey d be right.1111 Obama s AmericaObama gave his first interview as president to the Arabictelevision news channel network Al-Arabiya.He was thefirst president to mention Muslims in his inaugural address,and in the interview he reiterated his desire for outreach tothe Muslim world.Emphasizing that  the language we usehas to be a language of respect, he added, as if to under-score the notion that personal experience matters in foreignpolicy, that  I have Muslim members of my family.I havelived in Muslim countries. 2 During the campaign, Obama sattempt to make the case that his life story provided himwith greater insight into foreign affairs than his main rivalfor the Democratic nomination became the object of somecontention.In March 2008, the Clinton campaign had mounted arelentless offensive against Obama for his lack of foreignpolicy experience.As the former First Lady, Hillary Clintonreminded voters of the many trips she had taken abroadwhere she had met with many world leaders.She errone-ously hinted that she had had a hand in the peace process inNorthern Ireland and, in one embarrassing gaffe, claimed torecall that she had landed in Bosnia in 1996 while under firefrom snipers.Clinton released an advert intended to instilconfidence in her leadership skills and at the same timesow doubt about her opponent s readiness to undertake theforeign policy challenges that lay ahead.In the ad, sleeping children and the sound of a phoneringing is accompanied by a sombre voiceover setting thescene.It s 3 a.m., there s a crisis in the world and the ques-tion is who would you like answering the phone in this timeof need  someone already familiar with foreign leadersor someone new on the world stage? An image of HillaryClinton with glasses and phone to her ear, alert and clearlyvigilant, ends the spot.The message is clear.She has theexperience necessary to deal with foreign crises any time ofthe day.Although hardly as hard-hitting as LBJs infamous  Daisy112 At Home in the Worldad from 1964, showing a young girl plucking petals from adaisy while counting, interrupted by a grim voice callingout a countdown, followed by an atomic bomb explosion,the Clinton ad had the intended effect of calling Obama squalifications to be Commander-in-Chief into question.In order to undercut the argument that he was singularlyunprepared to take office as president given his dearth offoreign policy experience, Obama countered by question-ing the value of official junkets to foreign countries.Hehinted that such trips, the itinerary of which was oftencontrolled by the hosts, gave only superficial insight intoforeign cultures.Obama claimed that he had another kindof experience, ultimately more valuable than that gainedfrom official visits [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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