Barack Obama: Messiah or a naughty boy

DEPENDING on your politics, George W. Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard were amigo heroes or a demonic gang of three, when they were united in arms at the pointy end of Western democratic politics.

Blair has been replaced by Gordon Brown, who is struggling. Howard has been replaced by Kevin Rudd, who appears to be disintegrating into self-absorbed irrelevance, and Bush is bowing out, to be replaced by either John McCain or Barack Obama. McCain is a distinguished former POW and a genuine war hero. Obama, a junior senator, the son of a white mother and a Kenyan father, has been happy to run as a black man and, more important, as America's new messiah. The market for messiahs in politics after a long incumbency is usually strong. Brown, however, was no messiah. He was Blair's anointed, and impatient, successor. Rudd was the ALP's leadership candidate of last resort, chosen after a dozen frustrating years under a succession of leaders: Kim Beazley, Simon Crean, Mark Latham and Beazley again. As the compromise candidate after that long losing streak, Rudd was initially cautious about accepting messiah status from much of the media. But, given the exalted status he now demands from Cabinet and Caucus colleagues, he appears to be revelling in the role as if it were his by right. Energy Minister Martin Ferguson's leaked memo on Rudd's embrace of the ridiculous FuelWatch policy - against the advice of four ministries, including Treasury - may yet be seen as the first acknowledgement that the emperor is naked and thus weaken the market for messiahs. Obama is still surfing the messianic tide that carried him through the Democratic primaries against New York senator Hillary Clinton, encumbered as she was with enough baggage to sink the Titanic. He embodies the ideal of all those who place faith in optimism over the reality of experience, as crystallised by the title of his book, The Audacity Of Hope. But as Joe Klein - probably the best writer on US politics - noted, there were at least 50 instances of what he termed "judicious on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand formulations'' in the book, giving room for plenty of wiggle should Obama ever have to answer for his policies. This ability to walk both sides of the political street has been hailed by New York Times commentator David Brooks as "the antidote to the politics of recent years''. Maybe not. It may be seen as ambiguity or indecision. In fact, there's a great deal more hype than hope about Obama, and as much as he may wish to gloss over details of his past (as did the prime minister from Queensland), his past is as recent as yesterday's newspapers and he is struggling to keep ahead. Just a few days ago, Obama was forced to dump long-time supporter Jim Johnson when he was reminded that Johnson had used his former position as head of the Federal National Mortgage Association to receive sweetheart loans from big lenders. Obama's former friends now include Reverend Jeremiah Wright, pastor at the black church he attends in Chicago; Father Michael Pfleger, a white activist who also preaches in Chicago; and William Ayers, a former terrorist bomber. Johnson has a grubby conflict-of-interest problem, but the others reflect the reality that Obama has his roots firmly in the US Left and among the more extreme black leadership. When Kevin Rudd was outed as a visitor to Scores, a notorious New York establishment favoured by those titillate by writhing lap-dancers and pole-dancers, he claimed he couldn't remember a moment of the experience. It's more difficult for Obama to dissociate himself from his erstwhile religious mentors, however, as he was a member of Jeremiah Wright's congregation for two decades and many of the inflammatory, racist sermons he sat through are well documented. Although many Americans will be seeking a new morality from their next president, it's questionable whether this is the sort of morality they had in mind. Obama also lost a chunk of potential supporters in middle America after he addressed an elite group in liberal San Francisco during April. "You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them,'' Obama told his audience. "It's not surprising, then, that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.'' Although small-town Americans may be religious, and they may enjoy having guns for a variety of reasons (including a fondness for hunting), they don't like to be sneered at as ``bitter'' people who cling to their heritage out of frustration. Then there's the question of Obama's Muslim father, and his own Muslim upbringing in Indonesia, which his half-brother Malik suggested on Thursday would be "good for the Jews'' - a view many US Jews may find questionable, given the senator's proposal to hold talks with the leadership of Iran and the terrorist organisation Hamas. The biggest challenge for Obama, however, is whether sufficient numbers of white voters will be able to put aside all they know about him now, and what they learn about him before November, to accept him as sufficiently similar - in his views and culture - to be their next president. To add your comments join Piers Akerman's blog.