The miseries of Bruce and Barack

Colin Steer, Associate Editor - Opinion

Bruce Golding and Barack Obama came to power within a year of each other with contrasting margins of victories yet immediately facing deep economic and social challenges and having, from the get-go, to confront sustained political assaults that have kept them off balance for most of their time in office.

In the case of Golding, it was easily predictable that he would face a barrage of sniper fire, not the least from commentators with an a priori hostility. What few expected was that he would have painted large target signs on his chest and back to dash bareheaded into the line of fire in a bizarre game hoping that none of the wild shots would find home. It is like some of our West Indies cricketers who stick out their bats at a wide ball hoping to hit a six.

In reality, Golding's administration has been characterised by a remarkable series of missteps, misspeak and misadventure. Consider, for example, the first serious political challenge to his administration - the dual-citizenship conundrum. How could a political party, whose former leader, Edward Seaga, had to defend for many years his authenticity as a Jamaican, committed to the welfare of this country, despite his having been born in Boston, Massachusetts, been so careless - or arrogant - in vetting candidates for the last elections? The "my leader born ya" campaign song of the People's National Party (PNP) which was first introduced in 1976, had been used over and over and over again right into the 1990s to pillory Seaga. And this was despite his explanation and the well-established fact that while he was born overseas when his parents were travelling he had long given up his right to citizenship as an American. And then there was the evidence of his years of public service to this country.

Misreading the public pulse

Perhaps, the Jamaica Labour Party officials were overcome with hubris, thinking that since our Parliament had accommodated "dual citizens" for several years that it would also work for them; or perhaps they underestimated the speed with which Abe Dabdoub would slither to the courts to file petitions with the "secrets" he held for them.

Golding's latest announcement of a commission of enquiry into the Manatt, Phelps & Phillips mess may well be a belatedly embraced principled position or a cynical move to deflect some heat. What is certain is that over the next several months leading into a general election, the likely daily reports will simply reinforce his mismanagement and indefensible actions in the affair. If this was done on a point of principle, all well and good; if he hopes to score political points, he is once again misreading the public pulse.

Obama needs enlightenment

In the case of Obama, he seems not to have understood or appreciated the ruthlessness and absence of goodwill that characterise his opponents. He has been reaching out to people committed to his destruction; people who are determined to distort and lie as much as they can get away with, on their way to Congress. One of his predecessors, Bill Clinton, assessed the 1994 Newt Gingrich-led Contract with America, as a campaign predicated on a sense of entitlement - that they (the Republicans) should run America as a matter of course; not for the benefit of the "ordinary Americans" as they claimed, but for their moneyed friends. That is the light bulb that needs to go off in Obama's head and for him to find the passion to fight back with some political gumption.

Whether his Democratic party experiences heavy or even moderate defeats in the coming mid-term elections may not prove to be the political catastrophe that some predict. If the Republicans overplay their hand with characteristic arrogance, their ploy will backfire as it did in the Gingrich/Clinton era, and to which a majority of the American voters became all too aware.

To date, neither Bruce nor Barack has demonstrated that he has the steel will of a Bill Clinton who stared down his political opponents who went after him in the name of morality, all the while rolling around in their own filthy rags. Both need to find and forge a will of steel from somewhere, even this late in the day, and as politically damaged as they are - before they abandon the political project to others who feel they are entitled to rule their respective countries as a matter of course.

Politics, anywhere in the world, is a ruthless game in which the naive get eaten alive.

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