Diplomat or Rock Star
Obama came. Obama left. It was all over in less than seven hours and more than CAN$ 2 million all for Obama’s sake. Nevertheless, it was one of those short visits that guests and hosts want to last longer. He was courteous, attentive and broke the security protocol walking away from the protective shell of “The Beast” (his armoured limo, not Harper) to wave to the people that waited for him in front of Parliament House.
Is he an experienced diplomat or a perfectly honed marketing tool? He found a way to visit a market and even bought cookies to take to his daughters. As a matter of fact, he tried to buy the cookies. He even gestured over the counter with a crispy green 20 Canadian dollars bill when the woman that handed him (the now internationally famous) brown groceries bag, waved him off.
Despite the fact that Obama gets a mindboggling 80% approval rate among Canadians (Harper’s is a timid 40%) he generates the most diverse responses in the public. He gets unrestricted support from housewives to politicians, cab drivers to lawyers. Even from a CBC reporter that spotted the president’s motorcade on the highway and, on the air, shouted “I saw him, I saw him” like a Mick Jagger groupie. On the other hand, he receives disparaging criticism like “internet’s phoniest political product”, or what a Brazilian journalist said: “Barak Obama is a product president, built by marketers and ‘imagineers’ like those guys that create Disney’s rides.” It almost sounds like next Christmas we’ll find Obama action figures in department stores. Let’s hope they carry an American constitution, and not a bazooka; more Ghandi, less Schwarzenegger.
So Obama inspires the idea that change is possible. What’s wrong with that? Have we been under dark clouds for so long that we forgot what it is to bask in the warm bright Sun? It feels good to smile. It’s a delight to see hope everywhere. Is he a politician? Sure he is. Does he have skeletons in a closet, in a very safe place, under very heavy armed guard? He sure has. So what? What was America’s alternative? To vote for the Conservative Party lap dog? To feel, as cold fingers on your back, the certainty of a downright fall towards economic catastrophe, social upheaval, and generalized armed conflicts in several fronts? No sir. Long live Obama.
But is he a diplomat or a rock star? To tell the truth, he’s neither. Obama took over the United States in one of its lowest points in history. The American dollar, as the American culture, people and ideals are hated around the globe. It will be very hard, if not impossible, to present the world with alternatives based on a perception of continuance. Obama has to “reposition” (to steal a marketing expression) the whole country. From the immaterial concept of hope to dealing with the Iraq War and the Middle East, the American President has to sell a New America.
Borrowing the title of a bestselling book by Og Mandino, Barack Obama, at this point in history, has to be “The Greatest Salesman in the World”.
