Two Old Presidents and Barrack Obama

Deep into January 2001, two children of former presidents took their oath. George W. Bush, the 43rd president of the United States, and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the 14th President of the Philippines.

Both assumed their office in a cloud of legitimacy. He lost the popular vote to Al Gore, but after a protracted legal struggle in those unceasing Florida recounts, was awarded the presidency by five Supreme Court judges. She assumed hers through a second round of people power uprising, after which the unanimous pronouncement of twelve Philippine Supreme Court judges granted the Constitutional certainty of her ascension.

An egg pelted George W. Bush limousine on the way to the inaugural site. He raised his hand on the Capitol steps in Washington with thousands of protestors carrying placards that read, “Hail to the Thief!”

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo raised hers at the Edsa shrine amidst a jubilant middle-class citizenry who congratulated themselves yet again for another presidential ouster. Meanwhile the poorer classes who awarded Joseph Estrada a landslide victory in the 1998 elections stayed away, sneering and hissing at the spectacle of a stolen presidency.

He had eight inaugural balls the night before his inaugural, all of them black-tie events. Hers was a four-day street party of savvy texters. Drunk with triumph, the urbanite protestors gyrated along the ten- kilometer stretch of Edsa to the music of the Ouster Band.

He is known to falter in the English language. The Brits call him “The English Patient” for the way he so badly needs remedial lessons. He massacres the words “nuclear” and “trepidation,” and could barely remember the names of heads of state during televised debates with his opponent. While Americans were nervous about having a “mentally-challenged” President, Filipinos were secure in the competence, at least linguistically, of theirs. After all, she has a PhD in Economics.

On the day America celebrated its new President, the weather sucked. It was bitterly cold in Washington on inaugural night of January 20th 2001. Rain had become snow. The next morning the new President woke up to a nasty winter storm.

At the other wide of the world on Saturday noon of January 20th 2001, the sun was brilliant and warm when Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo became the 14th president of the Philippines. The middle class of Metro Manila celebrated the triumph of another Edsa, their bodies standing tall, their hearts feeling stout again.

Fast forward to January 20, 2009, eight years to the exact same day. It’s bitingly cold in Washington DC, but the day is bright with the sun out. Somewhat like people power in Manila, an estimated two million people came to view the inaugural of the first African-American president, Barack Obama, except that this one stands solidly and firmly on Constitutional foundations. No pelting eggs, no booing, no hissing but a whole lot of cheering and clapping.

At a little past noon, the country definitively closed the page on the Bush presidency and opened a new one. The world watched the fifth youngest US president step into the most powerful office with an aura of near-invincibility, while Aretha Franklin sang as though her voice had been honed through many years of song for this one musical moment.

What makes presidential winners finally deserving of their office is not what they bring to the campaign but what they deliver to the electorate at the moment of their victory. Candidate Obama has won, and President Obama he has become. With his victory is the transformation of the nation itself, with aspirations bigger and better than all the different sentiments of the citizens combined.

Colin Powell aptly described Barack Obama as a “transformational figure.” Beyond this outstanding description lies a sense of deep faith shared by all, Americans and non-Americans alike, that the world can be re-made and that people can make better choices. Two million people stood outside to testify to this faith. Several millions more watched on television, as if the world was experiencing a Durkheimian “collective efflorescence”

Barack Obama embodies this faith. This was the source of his easy victory. To move us all along forward, resolutely. To forge ahead despite the burdens of an economic recession and a dangerous world with two raging wars. To wear power and strength, but graciously, much like the African adage that was Theodore Roosevelt’s favorite: “carry a big stick, but speak softly.”
The true task of the presidency, I submit, is a firm and resolute commitment to it, to ensure that the sacredness and sanctity that citizens have imbued the office with are preserved, if not expanded. Presidents become enlarged persons when wearing presidential shoes, because they are expected to assume bigger-than-life proportions. They must be transcendent of narrow desires and ambitions, free of the pettiness and vulgarity that grips ordinary people. President Obama is America’s redemption and America’s pride.

Meanwhile, two other presidents on opposite sides of the world --- one ex, the other an incumbent --- are competing for the title of the Most Unpopular President.

He’s back in Texas and hasn’t been heard from. No one from the global media seems to think it worthwhile to do a post-mortem.

She’ll still be around for another sixteen months. Filipinos have suffered her this long; perhaps it’s worth the wait, just to avoid another constitutional row. That’s assuming she doesn’t concoct some legal maneuver to prolong her stay. Which might mean another people power uprising, and thus elevate the practice as the country’s national pastime.

Like America, I prefer to keep my faith. [Tess]


This article was first published in Globalnation.inquier.com