Opinion> Froma Harrop> America Doesn T Need Rebranding

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America Doesn't Need 'Rebranding'

I'm delighted that Barack Obama has been elected president and that foreigners are delighted, too. But I never viewed eliciting delight from non-Americans a reason for choosing a president, including one of color.

No other people so fervently seek the admiration of others as do Americans. On the left, that tendency is obvious. There has been much talk of Obama "rebranding" America as a liberal land of race-blind equality. It is remarkable how many Americans, young people especially, yearn for an "openness seal of approval" from people in countries whose records on racial integration is worse than ours.

The right suffers its own hypersensitivity, though that gets manifested in different ways. If a Frenchman claims that the cheese is better in his country — much less goes off on a general anti-American tear — the super-patriots launch a carpet-bombing attack on everything that has happened in his country for the last 20 centuries.

The left tries to please, and the right tries to hit back. Either way, it's an overreaction.

America is a land of ideas, not ethnicity. That's its strength. If a change in how America deals with the world is what voters wanted, then a president of any color could have done it. On this score, John McCain would have been a vast improvement over the current White House occupant. Obama's job is to offer a sage foreign policy — not heartwarming proof that Americans will elect a biracial leader with a Muslim middle name.

Europeans do like to critique the United States, and Obama's election has them responding with awe. That's fine, but their acclaim is based on an outdated notion of American race relations.

There's no denying the tragedy of slavery and Jim Crow — and their legacy is yet to dissolve. But Obama didn't have to happen for the world to see African-American advancement unmatched in any other majority-white country.

The United States has had black generals, senators, secretaries of state, governors and CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.

Yet you have French political analyst Dominique Moisi quoted in The New York Times thusly: "In this election, the Americans not only chose a president but also their identity." In addition to trying to figure out what he meant, you wonder where he's been.

Last year, the Southern conservatives of Louisiana elected Bobby Jindal, the dark-skinned son of Punjabi Indian immigrants, as their governor. (His real first name is Piyush.) Jindal is now a star of the Republican Party and listed as a possible presidential contender in 2012. In Britain, native-born people of Jindal's coloration are still regarded as something out of the national mainstream. Here, if they speak with an American accent, they're in.

The reporter who quoted Moisi also didn't quite get it. He writes that Germany's 2.9 million ethnic Turks "have little political representation ... with just five members of the 613-seat Bundestag."

The truth is every German citizen of Turkish background has a representative, just not necessarily one of his or her own ethnicity. If the people of Nebraska's Douglas County felt "representation" meant electing someone who looked like them, they wouldn't have just given Obama a majority (and the first Nebraska electoral vote to go to a Democrat since 1964). The county, which includes Omaha, is 83 percent white.

The objective of multiracial, multi-ethnic societies shouldn't be electing people of color, gender or ethnicity in proportion to their numbers in the general population. It should be fostering a civic culture in which someone of talent and discipline and good ideas can be elected regardless of those DNA.

That is how I choose to regard the election of Barack Obama. The best candidate won because he was the best candidate.

To find out more about Froma Harrop, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

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Ma'am;... Liberals, and all intelligent people realize that America may be the center of our world, but is not the center of THE world... Something else; The conservatives, as that definition wrecker is, think they are America and we are all so many sojourners... These faithfuls think they can do it alone, go it alone, and are alone the light of the world... Well sure, but sometimes you have to prove your worth, and quit borrowing against your value... You need more than moral superiority to sell to the world, and you still need to fact check your moral superiority before you try try peddle it, or you might find yourself selling morality at the point of a gun... Now, educated people are right to look across the sea for a good example... And they are right to not look to us... This is not to say they are perfect, but as the example of Germany post war shows, they were right to reject our constitution, and write one with proportional representation...And we would be right to do the same... Parties do not get it. They are Jack Sprat and his old lady cleaning our clocks... But more than that; we have pissed away resources we too easily stolen from king and natives while the Eurpeans have organized a large economy built on a common currancy... Now; we are at a cross roads... We have to decide whether we will take over places like Africa, and evict the former residents, or whether we are going to live within our own means...I do not think we have the resources to support war... We rapidly are losing markets for all but food and weapons because we have exported technology and productive capacity rather than utility.... But what we think we have: Moral Superiority; is junk... Every people is moral because no peace, and no society is possible without morality... It is no secret that our moral majority is not moral... They talk morality and act immorality... It is the liberals who are clinging to community, and trying to build a national community that really cares for its members and defends their rights...It is the reactionaries who say my community, all the while tearing at the liberty and justice that is the mother's blood of every nation state... So, I stand with the liberals and the world... America has too long been dominated by people themselves dominated by predjudice and faith... We can't trust them to act in their best interest, or in our own... They should be denied national political power with which they have all but ruined us, and they should not dominate our national courts as they have, to wreck our rights...Like any one else, they are entitled to run their own affairs so long as they do not injure others.. But their injury of others is the key to their success...Look only at the slander produced by the republicans in the last election.. These people do not care who they hurt to have power... Where is the morality in that??? Faith alone justifies it; but they do not justify their faith...Thanks...Sweeney

Comment: #1
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Thu Nov 13, 2008 5:16 AM

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Re: James A, Sweeney. Heh, "Liberals, and all intelligent people realize..." Liberals and intelligent people - that's mutually exclusive, pal. Say, look at the book you just wrote. Don't you have anything better to do than ramble on for an hour? Maybe you should make like us intelligent conservatives and go get a freaking JOB.

Comment: #2
Posted by: Matt
Tue Nov 18, 2008 9:34 AM

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