Can’t blog today without mentioning US President Elect Barack Obama. Whether his politics are to one’s taste or not (and I’m not sure we know anything much except the generalities) his election last night is surely a fantastic indication of faith by the American people in justice, equality and a new order in domestic and foreign policy.He hasn’t got the majority in Senate he needs to push everything through without persuasion but enough of a lead to get started on a process of reform. Now we want to see if he has the political judgment to give expression to his ideas which up til now have remained as impressive oratorial rhetoric. Simon Schama the historian has pointed out how George Washington was criticised just the same for his inexperience and relatively short time in politics. Obama must make an impact in his first year if he really wants to change things. I don’t know anyone who isn’t hoping that he becomes a truly great president.
So why the title of this blog? Yesterday I listened through the debates in the report stage of the counter-terrorism bill. One of the “noble and learned” Lord Lloyd of Berwick’s amendments was graciously accepted by the Minister, “noble and gallant” Lord (formerly Admiral) West, but a second one he resisted but suggested an alternative of his own. I listened very carefully but thought the arguments finely balanced. In the end I voted for Lord Lloyd’s amendment. The votes cast were equal, 130 on each side, which caused a great deal of consternation on the part of the Clerk who had clearly never encountered this before. The Blue procedure book was consulted and it emerged that the amendment could only prevail if a majority voted for it, so a tie meant it was lost. West is a listening Minister, he’s inclined to refer to himself as a simple sailor, but one can see how he became an admiral, he’s certainly steering his departmental ship in the Lords in admirable fashion.
Baroness Murphy, This post is written in a code which only middle and upper class females can easily decode.. Perhaps you could offer a more forthright translation so that a working class welsh dog could more easily understand ?? A healthy degree of scepticism I can understand – but given that his wife explained that he was not a messiah who would make everything right immediately, I do question why you appear to have very low expectations ? Or maybe I have misunderstood the point of your post – in which case forgive me.
Certainly I agree that it is fatuous to pretend that McCain would have been a disaster, and that Obama will remove the huge aftershock of the financial crisis in the ‘first hundred days’. Clearly the difference between the two is not that great. But given that he has clearly managed people’s expectations that a long struggle lies ahead, I’m detecting a possible drift towards judging people for having ‘faith’ which rather suggests that you don’t think this can be based on fact ?
Bedd Gelert,
I a just naturally sceptical of the over hyping of one man, I don’t think there’s any code there, female or otherwise. And by the way I am a state educated girl from a home where both parents were working class by background and would put themselves in a lower middle class category by aspiration rather than money. I suppose I am living proof like so many others in the Lords of the social mobility consequences of the 1948 Education Act.
But I remember the wild scenes when Kennedy was elected, very similar to the ones we saw yesterday in Chicago and New York. Yes, Kennedy did some important positive things (especially in my own field of mental health) but when it came to the Cuba ‘Bay of Pigs’ crisis his judgment was flawed.I want to see who Obama appoints to his administration and what policies he espouses in health, employment, foreign affairs. I don’t criticise those who have faith in him, I’m aware however that the public’s mood can change and change quickly if their hopes are not fulfilled quickly.
Oh Baroness Murphy, I do hope I haven’t upset you again – I do love reading your missives. But someone else has beaten you to ‘decoding’ of the message. I have just been listening to Catherine Meyer on the ‘Today’ Programme and she hit the nail on the head. When asked [I think by Ed Stourton, but hey,its early] about managing expectations, she said..
“Well, if he wanted to ‘manage expectations’ he needed to have started a lot sooner..” A lightbulb moment there I think.
I guess the communications experts would say ‘It isn’t the message that you send out, it is the message that people hear’. I guess a classic example of this is that my example of Michelle Obama saying ‘he is not a messiah’, has been drowned out by the media picking up on someone comparing him to Moses. Well, that is a bit of a tough one to live up to..
Since reading your posting, I have also thought more about those women who thought that the arrival of a female Prime Minister would be the answer to their prayers. That is a discussion for another post. But yes, I now have to admit that like you it is very easy to get swept up in the ‘hype’ such as happened in 1997 and for reality to kick in soon afterwards.
It would be a dull world where politicians didn’t try and appeal to our aspirations to make a better world for a children and not simply to live for the day. The promise that any child can grow up to be President may mean little to children whose parents are in ill health due to lack of affordable health care. But to give him credit, he looks better placed to ‘unify’ the people of the United States.
Forgive me the reference to class – my point was that the ‘Medium is the message’, and the that politeness and eloquence of the House of Lords isn’t necessarily the style which works best on a blog.
Maybe you could try for a slightly more punchy style here, like Lady Meyer, but possibly not quite as forthright as the style employed by her husband Sir Christopher in his memoirs DC Confidential 😉
Keep up the good work !!
Interesting words on this topic from Matthew Parris – someone who has been very prescient in the past, and is often right on things despite being very counter-intuitive to the ‘received wisdom’..
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article5109994.ece