One week after the Presidential inauguration, I’m still coming to terms with how this unknown senator from Illinois screeched to a halt on the world stage. Just a little over two years ago, he couldn’t get anyone in the South African government to meet with him.
Recently, a friend pointed me to a speech that Barack Obama gave in 2004 at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago where he introduced John Kerry. I wasn’t interested in what Kerry or Obama had to say at the time. But last week I was swept away by that very speech of four years ago, one that he gave at the tender age (in political terms) of 43. At about that same age, my most eloquent address (to my family) was a multi-line bark: “Kids! Ask not what your mother can do for you. Ask what you can do for your mother! NOW!”
Since January 20th, I’ve devoured everything in the popular press about the man. Not all of them are adulatory, thank goodness.
- Is Obama Black Enough? (Time, February 2007)
- The Hottest Couple in America (Ebony, February 2007)
- Making It (The New Yorker, July 2008)
- Visiting Granny Obama (New York Times, February 2008)
- 12 Lessons in Life from the President (Men’s Health, January 2009)
In the New Yorker piece on Obama, Making It, Ryan Lizza discusses the seamy side of Chicago politics and hints at how no one could have come out of it without dents and scratches. That the President surfaced from such a cesspool–smelling and shining like a clean (but nicked, may be) mug after a Whirlpool cycle–is testimony to how smooth, focused and cold Obama can be when he puts his mind to something.
His entire life has, it seems, been goal-driven. I’m stumped by how many hurdles he crossed even in his formative years. His half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, admits that despite an uncertain childhood (“of drifting in and out of worlds, here and there”), she and Barack came out unscathed for the most part. I’m puzzled by how, from what I’ve heard and read, Obama doesn’t blame a personal failure on an obstacle he faced. I, on the other hand, have found it expedient to tie my checkered present to my helpless past. Also, it makes for colorful conversation over a glass of Margarita.
And when I look back at my own life, I’d wager that the hardest times, the ones that I cannot erase from my memory, were the times that my family chose to uproot itself and make something of value in a new place and an alien culture. My family did that once, when I was 11, when my father decided to work in East Africa for six years. Two decades later, after marriage, I would have to go through the same emotions again when moving to Paris for a year. (The Seine turns murky when you pack your bags to live there but no tourist will believe this.)
Uprooting yourself is hard enough. But transplanting yourself in a new culture while untangling yourself consciously and deliberately from the weeds of domestic undercurrents? That should have taken deep strength, courage and maturity for a boy in elementary school, even for one surrounded by doting grandparents. As I make sense of Barack Obama’s background and pit it against the backdrop of how I’ve always prioritized my children’s sense of self and security, I feel that this man had every reason, at every stage in his life, to write a memoir more along the lines of “The Tenacity of Dope”.
Yet he sought to do all the right things. He kept building upon what he had built before. This motif for building (“remaking”) comes up again and again in his speeches. Recall his inaugural address in which he refers to those who spawn terrorists: “Know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.”
The key thing that he built–to withstand every campaign quake–was his image, an image that was under construction from his days at Occidental College when he was inspired to fight against apartheid. He sauteed this persona with meticulous attention to minor, but punchy, ingredients: he threw in facts detailing remarkable accomplishments;then he stirred in bouillon cubes of hope, hype and grandiloquence; he spiced it all up , of course, with fiber from Kenyan hemp (the penurious origin of a mostly uninvolved father had its merits when used in just the right doses), and served it up with a black hip and flair that, so far, only Oprah has been able to rustle up with sustained sincerity.
He must make a great bartender. Look how he mixes a shot of the impish with a flow of remorse while admitting to the chinks in his armor. (Come on, who doesn’t pick his/her nose once in a while?) When asked if he has quit smoking, no one, not even Barbeque Walters, will get a definite ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. (Uh..where’s the openness and transparency now, Mr. President?) In an interview with Tom Brokaw, you can see how he hedges around the smoking gun with his trademark sheepish grin but, as always, emerges smiling, redolent of vanilla, never of nicotine. He has figured out that it’s one’s little weaknesses that make people empathize and identify with you. In an early interview, he admits that his family life was rocky in the years after he joined politics. Which of us cannot identify with marital perils: flying china, unreturned phone calls and unwashed laundry?
So we’ve all ended up liking him for the right and the wrong reasons. We’ve begun nodding at his good traits and winking away his bad. He represents our struggles. He epitomizes our victories. He justifies our weaknesses. And, can he dance. In an Ellen DeGeneres challenge to demo to the world, for yet another time, that he can dance, Obama shows us one thing. He’s in step even when he can’t hear the beat. And who doesn't like that about a leader?
Some of my friends say our new president is the ideal man, after and before The White House: a hip kind of guy who will stand up for equal opportunity in his marriage, yet pull out the chair for his wife at dinner. He'll likely open the car door for her every single time. He may call home from work to ask if she wants something to be picked up at the grocery store. Never will he ask his wife if the $500 dress from Ikram (as seen on an Amex statement) wasn’t an untimely splurge–in this recession and all. He'll opt to cook three days in a week and do the dishes every other day. And, quite possibly, he has been fetching his wife bed tea every morning until the campaign began.
In 1983, had the following matrimonial ad appeared in ‘The Hindu’ without reference to race, religion, caste or creed, my dad may have responded desperately with a photograph and bio-data of mine.
And had Barack Obama taken me out to dinner, the trajectory of my life might have taken a different turn. At the time, just back from East Africa, I was disposed particularly kindly towards boys of East African origin who sported an Afro. Who in India wasn’t nuts about Gary Coleman ("What'chu talkin' 'bout, Willis?") in Different Strokes in the late 70s and early 80s?
Then, one must consider the similarities. Mr. O and I, we were both born in 1961, the Year of the Ox. We both won essay competitions in college (although he won them in an Ivy and I won them in a place that gave me the hives). He’s a people person. I like to think I am one too. And while I admit I need help in the BMI department (Body Mass Index, what were you thinking?), we both tend to wear our clothes pretty well. I will admit that there is that one big difference: Mr. O swore to faithfully execute the office of the President of the United States of America while I, Kalpana Mohan, remain, merely, a faithful Resident of the United States of America.
What’s in a letter? Just about everything, I’m told.
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