mike[space] dot net

He's eight years late, but the first US President fit for this century has arrived. The significance of the first black US President cannot be overstated, but that's just one part of the package he brings to the table. Intelligent, eloquent, inspiring, young, an idealist, the sort of person you'd like to meet or see on TV and think, "I wish he could get somewhere in politics, but he's bound to be corrupted and compromised by the system before he has a chance at having any sort of power".

Yesterday I tweeted "here's hoping Obama can fulfil even a small percentage of the hope and optimism people are feeling - things can only get better?"

Obviously I am hoping that Obama will succeed far beyond Tony Blair, but the shift in mood was huge when Blair took office, and right now that's exactly what America needs, and by extension, the rest of the world. In the absence of new government or new ideas here in the UK, this is no doubt the next best thing, and frankly if we're going to follow an American leader slavishly, then Obama has got to be a far better bet than Bush ever was.

I watched the speech yesterday and, like a lot of people, was very impressed. A couple of bits I wanted to highlight as personal favourites:

"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers" In a country where religion seems to shape the agenda so strongly, it's good to see such a significant speech being used to acknowledge the non-believers as well. Religion plays a significant part in US politics (oddly far more so than in this country, in spite of the fact that here the Prime Minister actually affects the church leadership), and I thought that this was a well thought out, and inclusive statement.

"We will restore science to its rightful place ..." The Bush White House has spent 8 years diminishing science for the sake of its own political agenda, endangering the world with its willingness to ignore the dangers of global warming. This is huge - to cope with a burgeoning population and diminishing resources, we need to be able to turn to science, and we need to trust in it. I don't mean all the stuff that gets distorted and appears in the press under lurid headlines to get people all excited and slathery - I mean real, hard, peer-reviewed science that it takes concentration and thought to understand the implications and applications of.

"we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals" Goodbye to Guantanomo, goodbye torture, and goodbye illegal wire tapping. I don't know how far this will go ... there's always shit going on beneath the public radar, but as a point of principle, this is absolutely required and welcome. And I was amused by the camera work that chose to focus on Bush at this precise moment in the speech.

"... as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself ..." the nub of some many principles that Obama himself represents. At the end of the day, we are all ape-descended life forms trying to get by on an insignificant little blue-green planet in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy. This section of the speech was conciliatory, and full of strong, beautiful imagery. Very inspiring.

For the first time in a long time, I feel kinda comfortable with Americans being viewed as the leaders of the free world. Of course things won't always work, and things will take time, but this has to be the best of possible starts, and I can't wait to see where we go from here.