The Obama inauguration

On Obama inauguration day, there were notices in my workplace mentioning the schedule of the day - as it turned out the BBC were covering the whole thing; the facilitator at an event I was attending suggested we finish early to watch it; and though I din't want to be part of the admiring crowd, my colleagues in the office were tuning in to listen on the Radio. Admitting defeat, I went to the CNN videocast, and was glad I did so. The Americans do ceremonial well and the inauguration of a president is a moving event, not because of the personalities involved, but because it emphasises that the powerful leaders of the day are part of a noble tradition.

People say he is cleverer than Tony Blair. I'm sure this is true; he has picked a more experienced team than New Labour in 1997. As much as I dislike Obamamania, I am a glad to see the back of the Republicans as anyone; a John McCain victory would continue the failed policies on Immigration, Foreign policy, Free Trade and allow the Republicans to defer as ever to Big Business and the neo-conservatives no matter what the cost to their countrymen. With defeat, they might reconnect with American interests, if only they can ignore the modernisers. David Cameron won't get elected here because of his progressive views, but in spite of them. The BBC might approve but most British voters see Cameron and his posh yes-men (yes-people) as shallow. It would (almost) be worth seeing Brown win an election just to get rid of them; "almost" - on that "almost" rests Cameron's political future.

On some issues, Obama might be better than Bush; he couldn't be worse. Fair Trade, not Free Trade sounds good to me: there has been talk of him renegotiating NAFTA. If he is in tune with black Americans, he'll know they suffer disproportionately from ethnic tensions with Mexicans so he might be sceptical on the benefits of unrestricted immigration. His policy on Afghanistan might leave us bogged down there as now, but at least he indicated that he'll speak to all governments in the Middle East, which is desperately needed.

His oratory imitates Martin Luther King, which sometimes was stirring, but generally came across as affected; or bad poetry: talking about the energy of the Sun and the Wind; why not say solar energy, wind turbines, etc?: after all, this is politics, not an American literature circle. "Not Big Government or Small Government but what works": how Blairite is that? It is exactly what they said in 1997. The means affect the ends; the left has yet to learn this, which is a pity for Western civilisation, because the left dominates our culture. The "what works" mantra was in the case of New Labour a pragmatic cloak for a deeply ideological Big Government approach; which has failed miserably, much to our cost in social terms as well as financial. In the end pragmatic government needs to be backed up by principles. This afflicts so-called conservative administrations: we saw how even the Thatcher Government used the machinery of centralised control (targets in the NHS, dissolving the GLC, appointing Quangos) to dislodge failure and attack entrenched left-wing policies. These policies made the conservatives look dictatorial and have eroded our democracy, giving the New Labour government a stronger state with which to impose its policies by stealth and patronage.

I felt great sympathy for Obama when he read the lines wrong, and attributed this at the time to the fact that he was more concerned with his delivery than the content. It turned out that the chap speaking the words to Obama fluffed his lines. The idea that he didn't want to commit himself to America's good in an oath went through my mind, just as it will go through the mind of many evangelical Christians; but I consider this unlikely on rational grounds. He took the oath again, which I hope is a sign that he takes the oath seriously; but by all accounts, there was no bible present.

All in all, I wish Obama well - to an extent. As a person, he is likeable, but he is a left-leaning liberal, so I can't wish him success there. I hope he changes politics enough so that the policies of Bush Clinton Bush McCain will become redundant; in this he will be aided by the demise of liberal hubris, caused by the Iraq War and the economic crisis; also, the severe problems caused by mass immigration should make so called pragmatist mainstream thinkers think properly - in line with ordinary people, who have to live with its consequences.

Ultimately my hope is that Obama's left-inspired policies will be discredited over 4 years, the Republicans will reject the modernising approach and Pat Buchanan will become President! Not very likely, but Buchanan has been consistently right about where America and the Right have gone wrong - and he is in line with what most people outside of the media and political circus believe, though they are afraid to say it due to the pressure of political correctness; the real flaw in the plan is that the Republicans are so in hock to Big Business and neo-liberal social, economic and foreign policy that they will continue to fail to represent the interest of the striving classes (i.e., ordinary working and middle class people who reject welfare). If Obama follows New Labour, then expect him to fail. He has been elected without having to argue his policies. Whether Obama proves a better leader than Blair has yet to be seen, but like Blair, he is a placeholder figure for the religion of Change; its believers invest all their hopes on any convincing wordsmith who mouths its pieties. Liberal left wing assumptions are the dominant assumptions of our culture and people who base their view on these assumptions can get by for many years on platitudes; authentic Conservative policies have to fiercely argued for, usually in the face of villification, and often prevail only after the progressives have disastrously failed. The facts turn out to be tory, as Margaret Thatcher said; yet it is left-wing pieties are accepted by default, which is why, along Obama is there on the podium, making his acceptance speech. The tragedy for the Western World is that the Right have allowed him this place by their moral and philosophical failures, which were there under Thatcher and even Reagan, but became magnified under their successors and without being balanced by the virtues of those two leaders.