One should note here that the French Revolution generated enthusiasm not only in Europe, but also in faraway places such as Haiti. The enthusiasm felt there was not just that of the Kantian spectator, but took an engaged, practical form at a key moment in another world-historical event: the first revolt of black slaves fighting for full participation in the emancipatory project of the French Revolution.
Obama's electoral victory in the US belongs, at a certain level, to the same line. One can and should entertain cynical doubts about the consequences of Obama's victory: from a pragmatic-realistic perspective, it is quite possible that Obama will turn out to be a "Bush with a human face," making no more than a few minor face-lifting improvements. He will pursue the same basic politics in a more attractive mode ans thus possibly even strengthen the US hegemony, damaged as it has been by the catastrophe of the Bush years. There is nonetheless something deeply wrong with such a reaction--a key dimension is missing. It is in light of the Kantian conception of enthusiasm that Obama's victory should be viewed not simply as another shift in the eternal parliamentary struggle for a majority, with all its pragmatic calculations and manipulations. It is a sign of something more. This is why a good American friend of mine, a hardened Leftist with no illusions, cried for hours when the news came through of Obama's victory. Whatever our doubts, fears and compromises, for that instant of enthusiasm, each of us was free and participating in the universal freedom of humanity.
The reason that Obama's victory generated such enthusiasm was not only the fact that, against all the odds, it really happened, but that the possibility of such a thing happening was demonstrated. The same goes for all great historical ruptures--recall the fall of the Berlin Wall. Although we all knew about the rotten inefficiency of the communist regimes, we somehow did not "really believe" that they would disintegrate--like Henry Kissinger, we were all too much victims of a cynical pragmatism. This attitude is best encapsulated by the French expression je sais bien, mais quand meme--I know very well that it can happen, but all the same (I cannot really accept that it will happen). This is why, although Obama's victory was clearly predictable, at least for the last two weeks before the election, his actual victory was still experienced as a surprise--in some sense, the unthinkable had happened, something which we really did not believe could happen. (Note that there is also a tragic version of the unthinkable really taking place: the Holocaust, the Gulag . . . how can one accept that something like that could happen?
This is also how one should answer all those who point to the compromises Obama had to make to become electable. The danger Obama courted in his campaign is that he was already applying to himself what the later historical censorship applied to Martin Luther King, namely, cleansing his program of contentious topics in order to assure his eligibility. There is a famous dialogue in Monty Python's religious spoof The Life of Brian set in Palestine at the time of Christ: the leader of a Jewish revolutionary resistance organization passionately argues that the Romans have brought only misery to the Jews; when his followers remark that they have nonetheless introduced education, built roads, constructed irrigation, and so on, he triumphantly concludes: "All right, but apart from the sanitation, education, medicine, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?" Do the latest proclamations by Obama not follow the same line? "I stand for a radical break with Bush's politics! OK, I pleaded for full support for Israel, for continuing the war on terror in Afghanistan and Pakistan, for refusing prosecutions against those who ordered torture, and so on, but I still stand for a radical break with Bush's politics!" Obama's inauguration speech concluded this process of "political self-cleansing"--which is why it was such a disappointment even for many left-liberals in the US. It was a well-crafted but weirdly anemic speech whose message to "all other peoples and governments who are watching today" was "we are ready to lead once more"; "we will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense."
During the election campaign, it was often noted that when Obama talked about the "audacity of hope," about a change we can believe in, he relied on a rhetoric which lacked any specific content: to hope for what? To change what? Now things are a little clearer: Obama proposes a tactical change destined to reassert the fundamental goals of US politics: the defense of the American way of life and a leading role internationally for the US. The US empire will be now more humane, and respectful of others; it will lead through dialogue, rather than through the brutal imposition of its will. If the Bush administration was the empire with a brutal face, now we shall have the empire with a human face--but it will be the same empire. In Obama's June 2009 speech in Cairo, in which he tried to reach out to the Muslim world, he formulated the debate in terms of the depoliticized dialogue of religions (not even of civilizations)--this was Obama at his politically-correct worst.
Nevertheless, such a pessimistic view falls short. The global situation is not only a harsh reality; it is also defined by its ideological contours, by what is visible and invisible within it, sayable and unsayable. Recall Ehud Barak's response to Gideon Levy for Ha'aretz, more than a decade ago, when he was asked what he would have done had he been born a Palestinian: "I would have joined a terrorist organization." This statement had nothing whatsoever to do with endorsing terrorism--but it had everything to do with opening a space for a dialogue with the Palestinians. Remember Gorbachev launching the slogans of glasnost and perestroika--no matter how he "really meant" them, he unleashed an avalanche which changed the world. Or, to take a negative example: today, even those who oppose torture accept it as a topic of public debate--a major regression in our common discourse. Words are never "only words": they matter because they define the contours of what we can do.
In this respect then, Obama has already demonstrated an extraordinary ability to change the limits of what one can say publicly. His greatest achievement up to now is that, in his refined non-provocative way, he has introduced into public speech topics which had hitherto been de facto unsayable: the continuing importance of race in politics, the positive role of atheists in public life, the necessity to talk with "enemies" like Iran or Hamas, and so on. This is just what US politics needs today more than anything, if it is to break out of its gridlock: new words which will change the way we think and act.
Many of Obama's acts as president also already point in this direction (his educational and healthcare plans, his overtures to Cuba and other "rogue" states, for example). However, as already noted, the real tragedy of Obama is that he has every chance of turning out to be the ultimate savior of capitalism and, as such, one of the great conservative American presidents. There are progressive things that only a conservative with the right hard-line patriotic credentials can do: only de Gaulle was able to grant independence to Algeria; only Nixon was able to establish relations with China--in both cases, had a progressive president done these things, he would have been instantly accused of betraying national interests, selling out to the communists or to terrorists, and so on. Obama's predicament seems to be exactly the opposite one: his "progressive" credentials are enabling him to enforce the "structural readjustments" necessary to stabilize the system.
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