Abu Hena :
Nobody realized the exact magnitude of what Barack Obama had achieved in November 2008 when he was elected as the first black president in US history. When Obama was born in 1961, many States had laws on their books, that enforced segregation, banned mixed-race unions and restricted voting rights. Now after his election as President, America could rightly claim to have become politically color blind. Other milestones along the road to civil rights had to pass through bitterness and bloodshed, but this one was marked by joy. It was an exhilarating end to the most thrilling presidential race in generations. A sense of history hung over the election and a country that was torn apart by race for over 400 years peacefully elected a black man to the highest office in the land that overseas the world. People, black as well as white, wore T-shirts inscribed with the slogan “Making history” and cheered and wept when President Obama succeeded in unfreezing an electoral map that remained frozen for years.
During the eight years of his presidency Barack Obama recalibrated the world’s hopes. The world of extraordinary rendition and torture was thankfully be-gone. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ended pulling out about 3,30,000 US men and women in uniform. The 2008 economic crisis was averted. Russia’s advance to Ukraine was halted. China was restrained in the South China Sea. Unemployment rate was brought down to four percent from eight percent in 2008 putting an end to millions of job losses every year. Twenty million people were brought under affordable health care coverage and fifteen million new jobs were created. An Iran at peace with America abandoned its nuclear ambition, stopped calling for the dissolution of Israel, and ended its support for Hamas and Hizbullah. Thanks to America’s support, Europe was at last ” whole and free”, un- divided by an iron curtain with democracy ascendant in the former Soviet states and other places where dictatorship prevailed. Europeans have taken over large part of the responsibilities that once fell to America during the Balkan wars in the 1990s. To many in Europe the Obama Presidency offered a chance to sweeten a relationship that soured under George Bush.
President Obama inherited a world of pressing troubles when under George Bush, America’s international standing sank to awful lows. Many got the impression that the Afro-American President would simply prepare for the day when America would no longer be the sole super power. But Obama was fully prepared to rise to the occasion. In his book, the ‘Audacity of Hope’, he wrote about America’s need to build a new international consensus to confront transnational threats. While in office he followed the roadmap and made all efforts to create international coalitions to solve international conflicts. While doing that he might have failed in some but he has succeeded in most. He is a man of dignity, superior talent, and high qualities. ” In choosing him” , The Economist had predicted then “America has shown once again its unrivalled capacity to renew itself, and to surprise.”
On Wednesday, July 27 President Obama delivered a stirring, valedictory address at the Democratic convention ,championing optimism in America and promising to pass the baton to Hillary Clinton, hailing her as his rightful political heir and America’s best hope to protect democracy and carry forward the torch of global leadership. Rebuking Donald Trump, the Republican nominee , for playing on Americans’ fears, he announced, “America is already great, America is already strong. And I promise you, our strength, our greatness does not depend on Donald Trump.” Virtually all of the happenings on Wednesday surrounded President Obama and the symbolic passing of the torch to Hillary Clinton. He left no doubt in his commitment to helping her succeed him, saying ,”there has never been a man or a woman more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as President of the United States of America.” Pleading passionately for Clinton, as a trusted and reliable ally not just for him but for all Americans who need a fighter to improve their lives and keep them safe, he said “Tonight, I ask you to do for Hillary Clinton what you did for me,” adding ,”I ask you to carry her the same way you carried me.” With history in the making once again, the Time magazine came out with a brief sketch of the eventful life of the most outstanding American woman . ” Growing up in the vanguard of the women’s rights movement, Clinton asked NASA how to become an astronaut, only to encounter a no girl policy. When a professor at Harvard Law School said his august school needed no more women, she made herself a superstar at Yale. She kept her maiden name after marriage, in a time and place where that wasn’t done. She out-earned her husband for much of her career. And she scoffed at the notion that she could ever be a cookie-baking, stand-by-your- man kind of woman… From her vantage, her career looks straightforward enough : a life of pragmatic politics in service of idealistic ends, like justice and opportunity for women and children… By any objective or reasonable standard, she is someone who has matched every professional challenge placed before her, from the courtrooms of Little Rock, Ark., to the brutish back rooms of high-stakes diplomacy.”
At 21, while studying in Wellesley College, Hillary lobbied the women’s college on everything from admitting more black students and adding black studies to the curriculum, to grading some courses and ditching the skirt-required dress code in the dining hall. She arrived at her first burst of national attention as the student-government-president, as a representative crusader in a generation of change seekers. When the Wellesley president offered a platform for her speech, she stepped to the microphone on graduation day. Her speech became one of the most celebrated of that graduation season” We are, all of us, exploring a world that none of us even understands, and attempting to create within that uncertainty,” Hillary said, “And so our questions – our questions about our institutions, about our colleges, about our churches, about our government—continue.” The applause when she finished reportedly lasted for seven minutes. Life magazine noted her triumph and she appeared with a headline borrowed from her speech : PROTEST IS AN ATTEMPT TO FORGE AN IDENTITY.
After Wellesley and Yale Hillary Rodham distinguished herself as a young attorney on the team that prepared the impeachment of President Richard Nixon. What happened next surprised many. Instead of making her way through the ranks in Washington , she moved to Arkansas to follow her law school boyfriend , Bill Clinton and soon married him. Bill was elected Governor of Arkansas but failed to be re-elected in 1980 and many observers assigned a large share of the blame to his wife who did not share her husband’s surname, dressed like a hippie and called herself Ms. when she ought to be Mrs. Hillary changed herself ‘lightened her hair and ditched her glasses in favor of contacts.’ Clinton was re-elected and they returned to the governor’s mansion with a toddler in tow. Now Hillary made the best use of her talent as a lawyer . In 1992 she reported an income of $203,172 compared with her governor husband’s take-home pay of $34,527.
When Bill Clinton won the White House in 1992, Hillary helped him choose his top aides and his Cabinet. As First Lady she was the first to have an office in the West Wing. As New York’s Senator she passed up a seat on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations for one on the Armed Services panel, where she could raise the concerns of New Yorkers in uniform and build her national security credentials. The Time magazine concluded paying rich tribute to Hillary praising her for what she has accomplished so far with great distinction and anticipating the big role she is destined to play in future : “Free to choose any life she could imagine, Hillary Rodham Clinton tasted many, discarded most and arrived in a place so unique, so vast and variegated, that simply being herself could never be enough.”
At this hour Hillary has nine point lead over Trump. If elected Hillary Clinton would become the 45th President of the United States, as well as the first to be married to a former president. She would be the latest in a line of Yale graduates and accomplished lawyers to lead the country. She would also be the first mother and grandmother to be commander-in- chief of the greatest country, strongest economy and strongest army in the world.
[Writer is an author and columnist. Was elected MP in the 7th and the 8th Parliaments of Bangladesh]
