Obama: a stimulus to the fading American dream and why America is showing the world the way again

My political awakening began in the late eighties, when I was 10. Ronald Reagan was in the concluding year of his second term at the White House, and one could feel the winds of change blowing over Europe. My parents and I had left the Eastern Block a few years earlier for 'the West' in hope of a better life. I didn't really understand much about international politics, but soon my education began.

In West Germany, I recall Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher's - unaware of what a big-shot my next-door neighbor is - guarded limousine speed past our home window and my parents constantly glued to the TV watching news and leafing through Newsweeks. It didn't take them long to apply for US immigrant visas. The changes were sweeping and I was a witness, although a somewhat innocent one.

'In America you can be anything you want to be' I remember many people around me saying, prior to and after my arrival in the US. And all of us immigrants believed it from the onset. I soon graduated from a reputable Catholic high school, went on to study at one of the more respected US universities and after graduation spent seven years working and traveling in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, seeing things that my grandparents at best saw only on TV. And, in the words of one of the most prominent journalists of our time, 'over the years I've only become more and more attached to that American ideal, even when America [...] didn't always seem to be living up to that ideal of herself'.

After my encounter with what President G. W. Bush once referred to as New Europe, the Middle East and Africa, witnessing overt nepotism, unending political quarrel, poverty, corruption and the absence of a civil society and basic human rights, I came away feeling blessed that I have grown up in America, with all the opportunities that entailed. It is then that I really came to appreciate 'that the ideal of opportunity for all was indeed something uniquely American'.

A European Obama?

Although, one can not deny the multi-ethnicity of today's Europe, for the most part European attitudes towards their colored residents remain resilient. Colored minorities are invisible in the top ranks of government, business and media. With roughly 8.5 million Africans living in France, out of 577 members of the Assemblee Nationale (National Assembly) apart from those representing the overseas territories, none are of African descent. Germany, with a three million Muslim population of mostly Turkish origin, has only 2 representing them in parliament, with Sweden some who trace their origins to Africa. Britain, although outperforming the rest, still remains far below the 10% (50-60 minority members) minority representation.

Hence, it is very improbable to have a Barack Obama materialize in Europe any time soon.

The European parliamentary systems make it practically impossible for a newcomer to politics - think Obama - to leapfrog far more experienced and better-known candidates. He would first have to make his way on to a party list and work his way up through the ranks. But Obama was capable of leapfrogging to take his case straight to voters in primary states.

One year ago no one in the world, or even in America itself would have predicted that a candidate of African descent would become the leader of the most powerful nation on earth. Barack Obama's election to the US Presidency marks a renewal, a turning point in modern American, and perhaps even world history. We are all on a verge of something historic and should pause to reflect on this achievement, for it is evidence of that exact American ideal we grew up so genuinely believing in.