The South African Civil Society Information Service

The Precarious Fate of Barack Obama
10 Nov 2009

Big Think interviews Cornel West, Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, on the question of Barack Obama.

West is an American philosopher, author, critic, actor, and civil rights activist, as well as a prominent member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

BIG THINK: How do you imagine the legacy of Barack Obama?

CORNEL WEST: I think that my dear brother Barack Obama, President Obama - he's a very complicated brother.

He has a sterling democratic rhetoric at his best that reminds you of Saul Alinskey and the others at times.

He has a technocratic team when it comes to policy. So there's not just a tension, but often times there's contradictions between the two, you see.

He comes out of a black tradition that has been explicit about telling the truth about white supremacy. But he himself holds "race" at arms length until there is a crisis. (Inaudible) here, Skip Gates there, you see.

It is probably because he is such a masterful politician. He's brilliant. He's charismatic. He's a masterful politician and he is concerned about cutting the deal and winning the election.

And I think in the end, this is going to be a major challenge for him. He has to decide whether he wants to be an Abe Lincoln who began as a mediocre politician. Remember, Abe Lincoln supported the First Proposal 13th Amendment that said, "slavery forever in the US Constitution."

Frederick Douglas bought a ticket to go to Haiti, said, "I'll never live in a nation that has an unamendable amendment."

Lincoln supported that (proposal). That was opportunistic at the core. He hated slavery, but he was willing to say, "Keep these people enslaved forever to preserve the Union."

See that's not the Lincoln that we talk about as great.

Lincoln became great because of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner who was beat up by Preston Brooks from South Carolina.

Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman -- it was the abolitionists that helped make Lincoln great.

Barack Obama has the choice between the greatness of a Lincoln and the masterful Machiavellian sensibilities of a Bill Clinton who was brilliant, charismatic, masterful, but tended to be too opportunistic. So far, Barack Obama has leaned more towards the Clinton side than the Lincoln side.

That (is) partly because he doesn't have an abolitionist movement equivalent. He doesn't have a social movement. That's what we need to do. We need to put pressure on him.

BIG THINK: What would this movement look like?

CORNEL WEST: That's a very good question. I think the kind of thing you're doing here on the Internet is very important because it won't take the old traditional forms of just hitting the streets.

Hitting the street would be one form. It's got to take a whole host of different forms. Different voices, different views, different visions put forward. Critiques of what's going on behind the scenes to reveal the contradictions of the Obama administration.

We need young people who are looking at the world through a very different set of lenses -- and even myself, because, I'm old school and old school has no monopoly on truth. That yes, I do still see classes and I do see empires and so forth and so on.

But there's also ways of looking at the world through popular culture that young people have that I don't fully understand. So that some of their criticisms will take forms that will take me time to understand and grasp, you see.

But we have to have the courage to not just raise our voices, but connect them to organisations. So that people can begin to see there are alternatives than the old neo-liberalism dressed up in fashionable form with a democratic rhetoric that hides and conceals technocratic policy.

And it could be that you know, Barack Obama himself, you know he's waiting to make his turn towards Lincolnesque greatness.

He hasn't made it yet and of course the decision on Afghanistan is going to be very important.

It's going to be difficult to have a peace prize and be a war president.

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You can find this page online at http://sacsis.org.za/site/article/186.19.