All the cliches about colour obscure the real challenges awaiting Obama

The world must get over its hysteria. The next US leader has Russia to deal with, and could face his own Cuban missile crisis

Simon Jenkins
guardian.co.uk, Friday November 7 2008

".....The most overheard media cliche is that "America will never be the same again". Yes it will, as it was when it last elected a Democratic president. Only if we break from the crypto-racist mindset that sees Obama as a black man first and all else far behind can the odds on a successful presidency be assessed......

Obama's 52% of the vote was not a landslide. It was the distortions of an electoral college system that served (as in the House of Commons) to turn an unexceptional four-point swing into an apparently overwhelming victory......

....The victory speech contained not one reference to his racial background. That ageing American icon, Jesse Jackson, hated Obama until Tuesday night. He was no son of slavery. Indeed the fascination of his memoir lies in the search by a member of an all-white family for an explanation of the colour of his skin.....

Dare he stop torture, accept the Geneva conventions, get tough with Israel, change policy on Russia, make peace with Iran? He has promised to get out of Iraq and fast. But he must also unleash a ferocious pragmatism as "war creep" envelopes Afghanistan, and stop making puerile pledges to invade Pakistan and bomb border villages....

Afghanistan could yet be to Obama what Vietnam was to the last great civil rights champion in the White House, Lyndon Johnson. All Democratic presidents eager for re-election find it easiest to buy popularity and a macho image by acting belligerently abroad. Obama has yet to indicate that he is an exception to the rule.....

The exhilaration of the past week has been palpable. I have lost count of the Americans who have said with relief: "I am tired with being hated everywhere I go. Suddenly I am loved." The moment is Rooseveltian. At a time of seeming ubiquitous misery, America not for the first time has pulled an iron from the fire. It has found a messiah......"