I Become an American

We'll come momentarily to Obama's discovery that it's not all fun being president, but first a bulletin on regime change for co-editor Cockburn. Though the U.S. Constitution seemingly blocks my path at this time, I have taken the first necessary step in my own quest for the White House by becoming a citizen of the United States at approximately 10 a.m. Pacific time, last Wednesday, June 17, in the Paramount Theatre in Oakland, Calif.

To my immediate left in the vast and splendid deco theater was a Moroccan, to my right a Salvadoran and around us 956 other candidates for citizenship from 98 countries, each holding a small specimen of the flag that was about to become our standard. All of us had sworn early that day that since our final, successful interview with immigration officials we had not become prostitutes or members of the Communist Party. Inductees to U.S. nation-hood were downstairs; relatives and friends were up in the balcony, including CounterPuncher and friend Scott Handleman, attorney at law. I was determined to start out on the right path. What is more American than to have a lawyer nearby?

Master of ceremonies was U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service agent Randy Ricks. The amiable Ricks actually conducted my final interview in USCIS's San Francisco HQ. At the Paramount, he pulled off the rather showy feat of making short welcoming speeches to the cheerful throng in French, Spanish, Chinese, Tagalog, Russian and I think Hindi. After various preliminaries, including uplifting videos about Ellis Island that tactfully omitted the darker moments in the island's past, Ricks issued instructions. Each time — starting with Afghanistan — he announced a country, the cohort from that nation stood up and it was easy to see that China, India, the Philippines and El Salvador were very strongly represented.

A handful of Zambians brought us to the end of the roster and we were all on our feet. We raised our right hands and collectively swore that we "absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty" and that that we would "bear arms on behalf of the United States," or perform "work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law." The phrase rang a bell. In the Second World War in Britain, so my mother, Patricia, would recall from time to time, cats patrolling warehouses where food was stored would get extra rations for performing work of national importance.

Minutes later I was outside on the sidewalk, registering to vote, albeit declining to state which party I would favor.

My own path to citizenship began with a green card in 1973, allowing me to work for the Village Voice in New York and be a legal resident. The man who helped me get that card was Ed Koch, at that time a supposedly liberal U.S. congressman living, then as now, in Greenwich Village. A few years later, in 1977, he ran for mayor of New York City and I wrote about him harshly. Koch was heavily backed by Rupert Murdoch and the New York Post, running on a law-and-order platform. Ed was always a petty man, and this trait was well displayed the night he won.

A PBS interviewer asked him what his "worst moment" on the race had been and he promptly said in his trademark squeaky whine, "the attack by Alexander Cockburn in the Voice... To think I got him his green card!" In that race, there had been slurs a lot nastier than any I made. If you walked around Queens in that campaign you'd see "Vote for Cuomo, not the homo" scrawled on plenty of walls.

A resident alien perches on a frail branch. In the mid-1980s, a nutball colonel called Oliver North, working in the White House for Ronald Reagan, began to reactivate a national system of prison camps for lefties from a blueprint that had sat in government filing cabinets ever since the Palmer raids in the Red Scare following World War One. Dick Cheney most certainly dusted it off after 2001. On North's plan it was safe to assume, as with Cheney's, that potentially troublesome legal residents would have been locked up, then kicked out.

So much for the negative reasons. But I have plenty of positive thoughts about America and am very happy to be stepping aboard what writers on this website describe in unsparing detail each day as a sinking ship. After three and a half decades, why be a non-voting (albeit tax-paying) visitor, particularly if you've been dispensing measured counsel for many years on how the country should be run? I've lived in every quadrant of the United States and driven across it maybe 40 times — not hard when you live in the west and buy old cars from a friend in the southeast. I know the place as well if not better than many.

And though on conventional reckoning it might seem late to start that long journey to the White House, the lure is strong. Now, it's true that Article 2 of the U.S. Constitution states that "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President." But if we are to believe a flourishing conspiracy movement, Obama has successfully nullified that provision. A substantial number of Americans argue strongly that his father's Kenyan citizenship, not to mention the refusal of the state of Hawaii to release his original birth certificate, throw Obama's eligibility into question. But since Obama will obviously not step down from the presidency even if every allegation is proved true, then Article 2 will be on its way to becoming a dead letter, encouraged in that process by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his supporters.

But who'd want to be president, you ask. Look at Obama. He talked of change, of hope, of persuading America to sink its differences and move on. Five months later he's hitting roadblocks. It'll be eight more impasse-ridden years, and then... it will be time for the man on the white horse, or in my case Agnes, a chestnut mare, half-Arab, half-thoroughbred, — getting along in years, but a worthy successor to the steed bearing my ancestor Admiral Sir George Cockburn, who entered Washington and torched the White House in 1814. He sent soldiers to the print foundry of the local paper and instructed them to destroy all the Cs, "so that the rascals cannot spell my name." Running against Washington is always the default option for an American politician. I'm on my way.

Alexander Cockburn is co-editor with Jeffrey St. Clair of the muckraking newsletter CounterPunch. He is also co-author of the new book "Dime's Worth of Difference: Beyond the Lesser of Two Evils," available through www.counterpunch.com. To find out more about Alexander Cockburn and read features by other columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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