In his victory speech, Barack Obama told the story of Ann Nixon Cooper, the 106-year-old woman who had voted for him in Atlanta. Personally, I found it to be easily the most moving part of his speech. This lady was born only two years after Queen Victoria died in Britain, and as Obama says, only a single generation from the end of slavery. She has lived through two world wars and a Great Depression. She’s seen the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, the assassination of John F Kennedy, the Watergate scandal, the fall of the Berlin Wall, universal suffrage, the invention of the car, the plane, the personal computer and the internet.

I marvelled at what an amazing and varied century she has lived through. Then a thought occurred to me: everything listed above happened in the 20th Century. So what have we achieved in the 21st Century? What have we created, invented, changed, achieved? It seems to me that the lagacy of the 8 years we’ve had so far will be – like the Vietnam War era – one that we’d rather not think about. An embarrassment. We, all of us in the West, were the ones blessed with one chance to start a new millennium off in a manner that we could be proud of, and we’ve blown it.

It wasn’t all our fault. We couldn’t have predicted the attacks on the World Trade Centre, and we still should never underestimate the threat that exists, endangering each and every one of us. But we didn’t have to be fooled into a war every bit as fruitless and jingoistic as the Vietnam war, though1. We didn’t have to suffer divided in apathy over who represented us, in Britain and abroad. We didn’t have to build an economy on a bubble of debt. We still don’t have to take having been so egregiously lied to over the evidence of Weapons of Mass Destruction without a fight.

Barack Obama’s presidency might, if we’re lucky, represent a fresh start to the 21st Century for America, a New Millennium Take Two – one that we would do well to try and emulate in this country. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a politician in this country who can hold a candle up to him. David Cameron, as the best of an uninspiring bunch, lacks Obama’s cultural divergence from the leaders who came before him. He lacks Obama’s grasp of the modern world and what it means for politics. He lacks Obama’s rhetoric and his natural storytelling ability.2

It’s all very well having policies that are better than Obama’s, and I will vote for the candidate from Cameron’s Conservative Party in the next general election because I think his ideas, ‘vision’ and politics are a country mile ahead of the Labour alternative.

I just wish I could feel inspired. And I’m Not Alone.

  1. I supported the war on Iraq at the time, and I’m not ashamed to say it. I also think David Cameron was right to have supported it – and now we’re in it we can’t just leave. However, I only supported it because I trusted the information being given to me by the Government, as did David Cameron. Had we had a different Government, it’s absolutely possible we wouldn’t have had a war in Iraq. [↩]
  2. In fact, the only British politician who comes close to evoking even a hint of the reaction Americans have to Obama is Boris Johnson – take note, for there may be even more to come from him in the future because of this. [↩]