Barack Hussein Obama and the promise of America

4 November 2008, 0412 EST

Readers of the Duck were privy to only part of a larger Duck-bloggers and Duck-regulars discussion concerning video footage of a McCain rally at Lehigh University.

The discussion included an email missive from Andreas Behnke that I found quite touching. I asked Andreas for permission to post his comments, and he agreed.

As we now approach the final hours of the 2008 Presidential campaign–a contest Obama is far more likely than not to win–I think it an appropriate time to share Andreas’s thoughts:

Wow, that [the video] was fun…

Each and every society has a certain percentage of flotsam and pond scum floating around. That, unfortunately, seems to be inevitable. Their presence should therefore not make anybody embarrassed to be an American, German, Brit, Swede, you name it.
The problem is that the McCain/Palin campaign whipped up this frenzy and gave these cretins a voice and the delusion of relevance. And no, McCain/Palin never said anything “racist” – but successfully allowed these dodos to fill in the gap created by “Who is Obama really?” That is the sickening bit of it all.

As for me, apparently a “European socialist” (European yes, but socialist… nah!), I watch the Daily Show, the Colbert Report, Saturday Night Live… you name it… and envy this country’s ability to deconstruct its own myths and ‘martyrs’ so thoroughly. I don’t think I’ll ever be an American, but it ain’t half bad here. And the next President is going to be one Barack Hussein Obama. It’ll be a while until the British Prime Minister’s name will be Ali Hussein, or the German’s Chancellor’s Mehmed Ozgud.

So cheer up, guys.

Dan Nexon

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.