【每日电讯报】It's July Fourth and Americans are in the mood to celebrate

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It's July Fourth and Americans are in the mood to celebrate
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/5735852/Its-July-Fourth-and-Americans-are-in-the-mood-to-celebrate.html

By Newsweek journalist Stryker McGuire Published: 6:00AM BST 04 Jul 2009


Party time: Today, America celebrates Independence Day Photo: GETTY

Despite the economic and military gloom hanging over Independence Day, Americans are feeling optimistic

It's easy to forget the very beginning of Barack Obama's address upon taking office on January 20. "Thank you. Thank you," he said in his now familiar way, seeking to quiet the crowd of over one million people. The crowd would have none of it, roaring: "Obama! Obama! Obama! Obama!" And so it has been ever since. We are today, on the 4th of July, 165 days into the Obama presidency. The euphoria of his election persists, and as Americans celebrate Independence Day, the very fact of his presidency adds something new and historic for them to feel good about: a black American family in a White House built by slaves.

But there's something else especially American about this year's celebration of the Fourth. It is the seam of unshakeable optimism that courses through American society. Americans remain high on Obama at a particularly difficult time in their country's history, their exhilaration masking deepening problems beneath the surface. "Green shoots" in the American economy are overwhelmed by bad economic news. Obama's ambitious plans for domestic policy reform are mostly destined to be diluted or thwarted by Congress. His transformative foreign policy agenda, marking a clean break from George W Bush, is running into familiar stone walls – a recalcitrant government in Israel, a cynical leadership in Iran.

Then there's the legacy of Bush's wars. Last Tuesday was the day America took the last of its 120,000 troops off the streets of Iraqi cities, garrisoned them, and began a phased withdrawal from the country, leaving Iraqi forces in charge. Washington and Baghdad are holding their breath, waiting to see if the end of the American surge translates into a surge in violence.

In Afghanistan, where a US surge is just beginning and where a US soldier was thought to have been captured by the Taliban this week, there's pessimism as to whether any outside show of force can turn Afghanistan into something other than the tribal battleground it's been since Britain effectively created it in the 19th century.

And yet the quaintly patriotic, sentimental and sometimes moving celebratory routines taking place on Main Streets and in back gardens across the United States today will not, with few exceptions, be dampened by the storm clouds gathering overhead. Whether they've been there for generations or a few years, Americans are an optimistic, striving, forward-looking people. They do not lean on history the way Britons do; indeed, they probably have too little regard for the past: this British strength is no doubt an American weakness. But America's forward thrust is a key component of its national character. If in Britain the past dominates and guides the present, in America it is the future that rules. "He's history" – which is to say, somebody is over, finished – is an expression that could only have been coined in America.

The gravitational pull of the future on American society exerts itself even on the day the country is celebrating its Declaration of Independence from Britain 233 years ago. The Obama presidency is a historic moment made possible by America's faith in the future and its willingness to break from the past. America is in a slow, probably very slow, decline as we move from what was for a while a unipolar world into a multipolar one; unlike the 20th, the 21st century will not be known as "the American Century." Obama is a gale of fresh air, America's great black hope at an unsettling time. After the Bush years, when over time most Americans came to share the rest of the world's unease with US policies, Americans, even many who didn't vote for Barack Hussein Obama, are happy to embrace him as the first global President, this relatively young black American with African roots, a South Asian childhood, and a Middle Eastern middle name.

Against this backdrop, the usual luxury of time enjoyed by any new leader is greatly magnified in Obama's case. Don't be misled by the stories of malcontents, the murmurs of presidential assassination plots, or the carping of fringe politicians and commentators who say he's importing "European-style socialism" to the United States. (With its focus on social issues like abortion and the teaching of evolution and on self-sufficiency and entrepreneurship, the American political landscape is so far to the Right of Britain's that David Cameron would have a very hard time finding room for his views in today's Republican Party.) Barely five months into his presidency, Americans are not running out of patience with Obama.

There's no denying that the weight of expectation on his shoulders is enormous, and that this carries a political risk if and when Obama fails to deliver. He and his advisers have walked a tightrope, simultaneously trying to tamp down expectations while taking advantage of them to propose the most sweeping legislative reforms and recasting of foreign policy in memory. His very first days in office set the tone and pace for what was to come. He directed the US military to withdraw troops from Iraq. He ordered the closing of the Guantánamo Bay detention camp by January 2010. He lifted the veil of secrecy over presidential records, and instituted procedures to make the Freedom of Information Act even more powerful. He reversed the Bush ban on funding of clinics and other agencies overseas that permit abortions.

Obama has barely slowed his breakneck speed since then – from opening the door to embryonic stem cell research to signing a $787-billion economic stimulus package to pressing for universal health-care insurance to nominating a female Hispanic judge to the Supreme Court. Given the breadth and scope of his agenda, there's plenty of room for failure and disappointment. Along the way, a deteriorating economy will, in coming months, tighten its grip on the American people. Just this past week, the US unemployment rate hit 9.5 per cent, the highest in a generation, and regulators seized seven banks, bringing the number of failed lenders this year to 52.

But even with the wolves of economic slowdown howling at the door, as Americans celebrate the Glorious Fourth this weekend, they will characteristically look ahead to brighter days, lifted in no small part by the man who in his Inaugural Address told them that as hard as these times are, "the time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history," and who in a speech in Philadelphia last year reminded them that his story was an affirmation of their story, of America's story: "I've gone to some of the best schools in America, and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slave owners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible."

That's what Americans mean – or should mean – when on this day, amid fireworks and small-town parades and wildly multi-ethnic cookouts in great city parks, they say or sing, "God Bless America".

Stryker McGuire, an American journalist who has lived in London since 1996, is a contributing editor to Newsweek and editor of International Quarterly

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