KEVIN O'FLYNN, MOSCOW
LOOKING FOR A RUSSIAN OBAMA
There are plenty of things to dislike about the US elections, the gargantuan amount of dollars that have been washed away in the campaign – they could have bought Iceland for that amount – the length of the campaign — the 2012 campaign starts Nov 5th – and the repetitiveness as each candidate repeats the same speech over and over again as they go on the stumpings.
You could, and people often do, go on with criticism of the election, of the sickly sweet patriotism, of those four frightening syllables George W. Bush, but one thing even the most cynical observer cannot deny, unless of course you work for Russian "Profil" magazine which ran a picture of a blacked up John McCain with the headline "Odin Chyort" ["The same Devil", Russian expression that means "It makes no difference" - ed.], is the palpable excitement about this election.
Something different is going on and even the most tired or the most cynical have wilted.
The queues that snaked around poll stations show how an election, a modern day election in an old democracy, where everyone is usually so blasé, can enthuse people. I've seen it among Americans in Moscow, passionate, worried and determined to vote for Barack Obama.
When were you last excited about an election in Russia? Any election? I've seen four presidential elections in Russia and the only one that had any excitement was in 1996 when many feared a Communist victory would swing the country back to its Soviet past. But even then the excitement was one of fear — fear of the old returning — and even that dissipated as the polls, and the money, went against the Communists before election day.
In all the other elections it has been so clear who would win right from the start and the public so cynical, resigned and apathetic that they may as well have decided on the result months before.
One journalist wrote that he hadn't seen such passion to vote since South Africa, after the end of apartheid.
Nothing has changed, no empire has collapsed – you may point to the financial empire and the end of the Bush’s reign but despite their problems these can't be compared with what happened in South Africa or the Soviet Union — and that is the remarkable thing that a country with as bad a leader as Bush can regenerate its political process and find in Obama a politician who they are willing to believe in.
It is not just a Russian disease. There is no leader in Britain that voters are getting excited over and there and there does not seem to be one in the near future although may be the Obama effect may change things in Britain too.
A million people demonstrated not long ago against the war in Iraq in Britain but when did even 90,000 people gather in Russia to demonstrate or to listen to one man talk of politics and the future of the country, unless they were bribed to come with concerts from groups that should have been cryogenated years before or with t-shirts and free trips to the capital.
What if a man with a vision like Obama, appeared in Russia now - an ordinary man, made good, somewhat more honest than most, talking of conciliation, of a health care fixed and justice for all.
I don’t think he would get within spitting distance of an election.
American politics from afar is full of an idealistic rhetoric that seems distant from the reality of how the country works and how it behaves at home and abroad. But even non-Americans can be seduced and hopeful when they see that sometimes it, kind of, works.
"That's how this thing started," Obama said the night before the election, telling yet again the story of a councilor who inspired him. "It shows you what one voice can do. One voice can change a room, and if it can change a room, it can change a city, and if it can change a city, it can change a state, and if it can change a state then it can change a nation and if it can change a nation it can change a world."
Kevin O'Flynn, a British freelance journalist based in Moscow
November 5, 2008
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