It’s nice that President Obama unexpectedly won the Nobel Peace Prize, only a week or so after the unexpected rebuff from the Olympic Committee regarding Chicago’s bid for the 2016 summer games. Oslo giveth, Copenhagen taketh away. Various pundits have questioned this award, in that President Obama has only been in office for 9 months and hasn’t ended any conflicts or resolved any major international disputes yet. He has certainly expressed willingness to look at the world in a more open, cooperative way than the Bush Administration, and has taken steps to build bridges with the Muslim world. But as to what the fruits of his good faith will be in Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea, Venezuela, Israel-Palestine, Burma and other crisis spots, it remains to be seen.
President Obama certainly does deserve a prize for creating an air of worldly grandeur about himself. He certainly cuts a good figure and talks a good line, given his youth, stature, intelligence and diverse heritage. Both his campaign and his Administration staff have used this to good advantage. (His occasional attempts to seem homey and rub elbows with the red-state proletariat just add to the luster). In all my memories of televised political events going back to the Kennedy election of 1960, I never saw anything like Obama’s Denver nomination speech, with the Greek temple backdrop. Barack Obama certainly does bring a cosmopolitan perspective to the gritty reality of American politics.
Another unprecedented feature of the Obama campaign having an international flavor was its use of street artist Shepard Fairey’s “socialist realism” posters celebrating Obama’s major themes.
As a student of Twentieth Century history, these posters definitely caught my eye; there was a strong sense of déjà vu about them. And that turned out to be quite intentional; in a recent interview, Fairey said “I’m inspired by historical art from the Soviet Union”.
His Obama posters, especially the serious, visionary expression that he captures, clearly share a certain style and sensibility with images used by earlier idealistic political movements. As with Mr. Obama’s campaign, these movements were meant to bring social and economic change to powerful nation states. Just have a look:
I’ve intentionally selected the visual comparisons here so as to exclude any recognizable political leaders from these past movements. I don’t wish to associate President Obama with their many sins. I don’t intend to be incendiary. But the irony remains, given the failures of those internationalist regimes and the millions of lives lost or ruined in their rise and fall. I’m not suggesting that Obama will subject our nation to similar turmoil. But I am suggesting that despite the Nobel Committee’s high regard for Mr. Obama, he and his staff have not shown sufficient regard for the lessons of history.
After his upcoming return to northern Europe, President Obama needs to put his shiny international award away and get back down to the nitty-gritty of running a center-right nation facing a time of great and often distressing change. America certainly does need to change; it needs to make further accommodations with the rest of the planet, on which it increasingly depends.
But it cannot entirely give in to “international sensibility”. The USA has historically been a bit of a maverick, and in this ‘maverickdom’ has often stood for some of the better ideas devised by the human race. Perhaps America didn’t invent democracy and human rights and other accouterments of civilization, but it has done more than most to institute them and make them available to the masses in an otherwise violent, atavistic world. And it has sacrificed much in challenging some of humankind’s worst ideas and ideals, which have often infected “movements for change” inspired by good intentions. I hope that Mr. Obama will ultimately choose to affirm and re-energize this great heritage, while admitting to our nation’s inevitable mistakes. That would be his best gift to the international scene.