Obama a 'new' American hero

Verashni Pillay

Cape Town - When Barack Obama comes onto stage, he moves like a jazz musician.

So said Harvard Professor Elaine Kamarck, a superdelegate in the US Democratic Party, who was a guest speaker at a public sector awards dinner in Cape Town on Saturday.

"There's a cool about Barack Obama, a capacity to make people really want to be around him," she said in her keynote speech at the Impumelelo Innovation Awards Trust annual awards ceremony, which rewards and promotes innovations in service delivery in South Africa.

Obama phenomenon

Impumelelo executive director Rhoda Kadalie joked to the packed audience in the Cape Town City Hall, that everyone would rather hear Kamarck speak about the American elections and the "Barack Obama phenomenon".

"It truly is a phenomenon, no one expected him to do so well," said Kamarck, a veteran of the Clinton administration from 1993 to 1997. She then served as the Senior Policy Advisor for the Al Gore presidential campaign where she witnessed from the inner sanctums the closest and most contested presidential election in US history.

Superdelegates are likely to play a decisive role in this year's tight US Democratic presidential nomination race. According to the Democratic Party's nomination system, a hefty 20% of all delegates (796) at the party's national convention are not in any way obligated to reflect the will of the voters who have already voted in the state primaries.

Hillary Clinton recently lost her superdelegate lead to Obama. He has 292 superdelegates supporting his presidential bid, while she has 274.

But Kamarck pointed out that Obama had won support from a whole new generation of voters: "the millennials", as she called them - the most racially diverse and racially integrated generation in American history.

"This is a generation that is turned off by a politics that tears people down and insults them," said Kamarck, referring to the politics of the previous 'baby boomer' generation. "They're a generation of solutions and a generation to whom Barack Obama's message of hope is quite extraordinary and quite appealing."

Not American enough?

But Kamarck cautioned that the Republican party would paint Obama as "not really American," in the general elections, in contrast to the classic American hero, Senator John McCain.

"John McCain is the American hero of John Wayne movies," joked Kamarck, pointing to his status as a Vietnam war veteran and prisoner of war.

She said Obama would have to present a new version of what it means to be American. "He will have to present a different American dream, a new multicultural, multiracial dream - the kind of America we're increasingly becoming."

But the good news for America and the world was that change was imminent.

"America feels very good about these elections," she said. "For one thing, we're almost rid of Bush."

- News24