A new sheriff in town
“This time must be different…” (Barak Obama)
Ironically, on the day the UK celebrates an attempt to blow up Parliament with firework displays and bonfires across the country, we watch the US elect its first black president. Truly, a red hot slice of history – with a side order of “change” to come.
Giving his reaction, Dr Robert Franklin of Morehouse College in Atlanta talked of an end to the politics of militarism and division. While Europe is certainly ready for a change in the US – particularly in its foreign and environmental policies – and there’s a mood of optimism abroad, it’s tempered by a realisation that things aren’t going to change too much. As one American told Bookpacking on the QT, “Congress makes the laws, the President only enforces them”.
But when a Republic blogger said that her bulletin board was talking of a “dark day” for the US, it kinda made Bookpacking wonder where that person has been for the last few years. And then it hit home that really, anything has to be better than what’s gone before. The US has less than 5% of the world’s population, but when they sneeze, the rest of the globe is covered in snot.
Expectation weighs heavy on the new man’s shoulders. Last week in London, Bookpacking spoke to a lifelong Labour activist who said she now loathed Tony Blair even more than right wing British icon Margaret Thatcher. In 1997 Blair’s victory song – and Bookpacking was there, blagging our way into the press enclosure – was “Things Can Only Get Better”. How much better things can get, in a country with as much potential as the US, remains to be seen.