Barack Obama now absolutely dominates the politics of his own country and is such a huge presence in the rest of the world that you have to pinch yourself to remember that less than half of Americans had even heard of him just two years ago.
As the man himself has said, he didn't start off as the likeliest person to become President of the United States. His first name rhymes with Iraq, his middle name is Hussein and his surname is only a consonant away from Osama. He was born off the continental United States in Hawaii and spent some of his formative years in Indonesia. A freshman Senator, his pre-presidential reputation was built on his oratorical gifts rather than any legislative achievement of note. To cap it all, his only executive experience before he arrived in the Oval Office was as a community organiser in Chicago. It was this line on his slender curriculum vitae that was seized on by opponents to ridicule his pretensions to lead the world's biggest economy.
And yet it is in that section of his biography that we can find some of the pointers to what drives America's 44th President. It was there in the Windy City that Obama was immersed in what he has called "the needs and struggles, the hopes and dreams, of ordinary people". It was there that he discovered his appetite for public service and his ambition for power. It was there that his basic credo was formed, what he once described as "the obligation to repair the world".
For the first time in several decades, America is now helmed by an unashamed liberal who believes in the power of government to do good. Ronald Reagan began his right-wing revolution in 1980 with the declaration that government was never the solution and always the problem. Trickle-down, lightly regulated, turbo-charged finance capitalism became the dominant force not just in America but around much of the rest of the world. Even when the Democrats won the Oval Office with Bill Clinton, he adapted to that ideology more than he challenged it. Indeed, it was Clinton who pronounced that "the era of Big Government is over".
Reframing the debate
Obama used his inaugural speech to announce an ambition to reframe the terms of this debate. "The question is not whether government is too big or too small," he declared, "but whether it works." He is the first American leader since Lyndon Johnson, a half century ago, to argue for more government, not less. His campaign took a gamble that Americans were ready, after a 30-year swing to the conservative end of the spectrum, for a more activist state. He wants to create four million new jobs over two years, extend healthcare to nearly everyone, reinvigorate the country's education system, and completely recast the way in which Americans produce and consume energy. Among his priorities is the development of green power generation and improvement of both the speed of broadband networks and access to them.
