A column in the New York Times on Sunday February 15 chided the new non-white American president for a lack of respect toward his white second-in-command. In a twist on stereotypes, the "intellectual" minority was perceived as condescending to his "working class" white partner in a continuation of a campaign charge that the presidential candidate had been "elitist."
The perception was based on a remark by the president in his first press conference in early February, when he said he didn't know what the vice president meant by saying the stimulus proposal for the crisis ridden American economy could fail. The term that sparked the response was "not surprisingly," a qualifier the president laughingly added to his statement about his partner.
The phrase "not surprisingly" struck the white columnist as "snarky." She went on to cite a Saturday Night Live sketch and a Gawker media blog piece that interpreted the relationship between the two men in like vein. The column ended with the advice that the president "should brush up on his Jane Austen" so as to treat his "lesser" with more sensitivity.
A perspective in which both men were perceived as equals would have led to an opposite conclusion. In that light, the president would have been seen as comfortable enough with his second-in-command to publicly air the synergy that had brought them together for a winning ticket that seemed impossible before the election and was essential for the transition America needed to make in its historic 2008 transition.
The young half-white Barack Obama stormed onto the national stage with his self-possessed and pointed eloquence at the 2004 Democratic Convention. At the time, a manufactured war based on misrepresentation of facts, combined with questionable voting procedures, secured a second term for an incumbent conservative president. The administration's preemptively aggressive policies in a world growing global while deregulation let the free enterprise American system run wild for four years led to a global economic crisis spearheaded by a tanking American economy in a collapse unequaled since the Great Depression.
In the 2008 election, the choice of a conservative "maverick" to run against the only viable agent for change proved disastrous for the status quo elements that had run the country into the ground. The wild card choice of a dramatically retrogressive conservative running mate sealed the demise of the white-dominated world as it had been known since Greece and Rome fell to other Europeans, who were then overtaken by the upstart, multicultural North Americans who got their start based on black slave trade and who then unseated the old world paradigm by electing a half-black man to be their leader a mere 150 years after that abomination of humanity was outlawed in armed conflict over the principle of going forward as a sovereign state toward justice or breaking into two entities, one progressive and the other clinging to old ways.
Neither the new non-white American president nor the wizened new white vice-president was a political neophyte when they joined together. Both knew the historic step being taken through the union, the breaking of the global sound barrier of racial relations.
The loquaciously elegant white-haired white man and the coolly eloquent young half-black man formed a black and white team that was able to break through racial preconceptions. They were perfect for America's necessary 2008 transition and had only one outstanding issue to address.
America needed to adjust, along with the rest of the world, to a brand new form of solidarity in leadership based on black and white synergies. The leadership needed nothing more than to hold steady as fears sounded and led to abatement.
Helen Fogarassy is a Hungarian-born American internationalist writer working with the United Nations for nearly 20 years. She is the author of a suspense novel, The Midas Maze, about murderous hijinks in UN/US relations. She is also the author of The Light of a Destiny Dark, a novel about the Euro-American cultural gap through Hungarian eyes, and a nonfiction eyewitness tribute to the UN's work, Mission Improbable: The World Community on a UN Compound in Somalia. All are available on the major web bookstore sites. E-mail her at helfog@aol.com
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