Barack Obama (Kwabena A)

Kwaku did not share his piece that he sent to me with the reading audience, as stimulating as his thesis on Obama was. However, Ed and Ed raised the same issues so I've decided to share my comment on Kwaku's text with all of you:

Obama's Presidential bid is not just an exercise in Black presidential aspirations. It is a continuation of the struggle for our grandchildren. He does not have to win the White House to take us a step closer to the "Promised Land"! (Yes, this is Black History Month in the US, for those of you listening in from UK, Japan and South Africa)

Kwaku, what you termed "White America", I believe will not be any different in 2012, 2016, or 2020 for Obama, or Jackson, or Sharpton. If any change at all, it will be a better chance for a Latino candidate than any other to win the White House.

A strong case can be made in a debate over Obama's experience or lack thereof. Other than Vice Presidents (who aspire to be presidents), where does one train to become a President? Yes, the one institution I know is the Ghana Military Academy .

How old was Martin Luther King when he became, what I term, the "Moses of the Negro People"? He was about 25 years!

Several months ago when Mrs Clinton's name was the only game in town, I heard the same story that a woman cannot win the White House and if she becomes the Democratic candidate, the Republican boys will cream her! I'll leave others to make the case for Mrs Clinton, or we may return to her case in the future. The pessimism over Clinton and Obama has rekindled the "bring back Gore" campaign. Gore is doing an excellent job in the battle of ecology and industrial greed.

All well and good! My loyalties are clear. I can't wait to see a Democrat in the White House.

But, we must not forget that, the founders of this nation did not want a one party state. What happened in the last six years with a Republican White House, a Republican Senate, a Republican House of Representatives, that was gradually creating a Conservative Supreme Court, would make George Washington gather his bones and turn in his grave! Think about what has happened since November 2006. When the Senate and the House (Congress) went to the other Party, the White House paid attention! This country functions very well when the powers are separated. Akua, how am I doing on the Constitution?

In 1964, the Convention Peoples Party (CPP) of Ghana, committed a political suicide when the party with it's overwhelming parliamentary majority proclaimed Nkrumah, President for life! The judiciary was hand picked by the President! The Parliament (Legislature) became the rubber stamp of the Executive. The economy went into a tail spin. And nobody could tell the President that "he had no clothes". In 1966, it took only one, a single foreign diplomat of a certain (unnamed) powerful nation, who was stationed in a neighboring country, with a few pounds/dollars to get a Colonel and a Major in the Ghana Army to set the country on a downward spiral with no recovery for 34 years of one coup e'etat after another.

Tip ONeill, former US Congressman and Speaker of the House of Representatives said that all politics is local. I for one, my special interest in Obama is that he has already moved the line of scrimmage one step forward to the "Promised Land", not for me and you, but for our grandchildren and their children!

Ed and Ed, I’m sure the reading audience enjoyed your commentary. I did. If Obama has announced his candidacy with Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton on a podium besides him, would that have made him "black enough" to those who see him as ... (whatever)? I've embodied the sentiments in your articles to a large extent in this response to my dear friend, Kwaku's, assessment of the Obama factor in American politics today.

There is a new world order. What happens in the American White House today reverberates through the corridors of the Castle in Accra, the streets of Abuja, and the alleys of Dar Es Salam. Do not sit idle.

The Darfour refugees in Chad, the Somalia refugees in Kenya, are you, you, you and me. They are the sisters and brothers of the African student you met at the party at the frat house. If it could happen in Nigeria(the land of Balewa), Sierra Leon(the land of Siaka Stevens), Liberia(the land of Tubman), and Ivory Coast (the land of Houphet Boigny) it could happen any where.

Talk with you later.

(PS: I'm too tired to proof read this article ...good night ... you do the editing for me)