Watching Barack Obama tear up...

Watching Barack Obama tear up, making a thank you speech to his campaign team, made a thought spring to mind which made me reach for the PC and tap out this blog. It put words to an inchoate feeling all week watching this remarkable man win his second term. And it is this. He looked ordinary. He looked just like a man. So what if he is a half-Kenyan half-American son of a single mom who brought him up all over the world, and whose own life would have been meaningless had he not brought out his inner messiah to try and change the world. He is just a man. Period. The mistake I made all these years was to assume that somehow he was something more, that there was a special quality in him which would allow him to transcend ordinary divisions and surmount the usual barriers. All the hopes and aspirations of those who watched him climb to the presidency in 2008 were vested in him. The world was melting down, there were no answers and there were no leaders. Cometh the hour, cometh the man, they say. And so there was Barack Obama. The last two months of the presidential race have been fascinating because they compressed into a few weeks what we all saw about his presidency. Why did he not wipe the floor with Romney in the first debate? Why did he not sign Simpson-Bowles into law? A thousand questions and many conundrums. Perhaps the greatest thing that a democracy like the United States does for a leader is to humanize him and make him look like the ordinary mortal he is. He shines nevertheless but as a mere man. It is the beauty of the process, that asks so much of a man that he is exposed. And all his foibles and peeves are teleported into the public eye. Barack Obama is a man who became President. When he got there, he did some good stuff and he did some crappy stuff. There was stuff he could have done better. When he realised he could actually lose, he just understood his market better than his opponent and sold the product ruthlessly to the base. All this is very human. I hope the next four years of his presidency are driven by similar human impulses, not godly ones. Small steps to reach out to the Republicans, and big steps together to set America right. And for those who wonder why bother so much, look at the anointment ceremony taking place behind the Heavenly Gates. Does Li Xinping really put on his trousers one leg at a time?