When Barack Obama was elected in 2008 I watched the inauguration with my wife and kids. Although Obama was evidently not the Messiah and this wasn't the second coming, it was clearly momentous that the USA should elect a black man.
It struck me then that it wouldn't be a bad idea for America's underclass to grasp that Obama was just as likely to make a mediocre president as any half-witted white Texan, in just the same way as it probably did the women's movement a world of good to discover that Mrs Thatcher turned out to be a power-mad harridan rather than a touchy-feely conciliator. Part of a process of maturing.
And so it has proved. Obama doesn't seem from this distance to have been an absolutely terrible president, at least not compared with whatever Tea Party sponsored lunatic the Republicans might have been able to come up with, and he has of course been hamstrung by having lost control of Congress half way through his first term. But his main skill is as an orator. He probably doesn't write his own speeches, but boy can he deliver. He is a man of enormous charisma and gravitas, who doesn't look half so self-assured when asked to answer a question to which someone else hasn't previously written down the answer.
And then there's this funny business with Edward Snowden. It's as well to be clear about this. I don't think we can criticise the FBI for monitoring British emails. It's called spying. Everybody does it. I hope GCHQ is doing its damnedest to monitor what's going on in the US. The really serious thing is that the FBI appears to be snooping on its own citizens as well. That's where Snowden comes in, and why what he's saying is important. In this country the police and security services can only monitor what we're doing if they persuade a judge to give them permission. At least that's the theory. I imagine it's the same in the States. If the FBI is snooping on its own citizens without permission, as Snowden alleges, some serious rules have been broken, not least in the US constitution.
What is Obama's response to this? Answer, to try and press for Snowden's extradition so he can face trial.
This is not the Obama the liberal half of the US population thought they were electing. It is not the Obama who promised before 2008 that he would close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, for example.
No, it is the Obama who five years on, allows Guantanamo to remain open, its occupants outlaws in the true sense of the word. They are after all beyond the reach of any law - US, Cuban or otherwise - which might be used to assist or condemn them.
