Question

To what extent does the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States of America affirm the Jeffersonian ideals of equality expressed in the Declaration of Independence? Has equality been fully realized in America? (300 words)

Answer 1

A. Obama as Modern Jeffersonian
“Jeffersonian foreign policy is no bed of roses” (Mead 2010). Fearing and actively avoiding the consequences of military conflict can readily lead to accusations of wimpishness, not least in the context of a highly charged and partisan domestic political landscape. Yet accusations of timidity on the part of Obama are misleading and have frequently been (justifiably) deflected for three reasons. First, Obama achieved that which Bush failed to: he got Osama bin Laden, whose extrajudicial assassination was both the remit of Jeffersonian cost-benefit calculation and the ultimate tonic for vengeful Jacksonian America (Jarvis and Holland 2014). This single incident helped to silence and appease some of Obama’s most vitriolic opponents. Second, Obama is not a president solely motivated by the avoidance of armed conflict. Rather, he is a president who will commit American forces to action, in a manner carefully arrived at, when he considers the cause to be just and practical. In this, he is no different from other presidents before him. It is simply that his cost-benefit calculations err on the side of caution, not least respective to his immediate predecessor’s preferred war-fighting style. Third, Obama has been an internationalist president. Far from focussing exclusively on the creation of a more perfect union at home, Obama has seen himself as a uniquely positioned global statesman, leading the world’s only superpower, in a dangerous and increasingly interconnected world.

Both vindicationists and exemplarists share an appreciation of America’s exceptionalism and role to play in changing the world for the better — for both altruistic and self-interested reasons. They differ, however, on the best means for doing so. “Recalling Thomas Jefferson, in his Cairo speech to Muslims worldwide, Obama quoted the founding father; ‘I hope that our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power the greater it will be’ (Obama, 2009, also cited in Marsden 2011). Like Jefferson, Obama most naturally occupies an exemplarist position, whenever circumstances permit. The shining light of America’s example — a beacon of freedom visible to the rest of the world — is the optimal means by which to encourage democratic transition. Obama is certainly politically opposed to the Hard Wilsonian, vindicationist leanings of his predecessor — more inclined to use American military superiority to force change on others. However, as with all of Obama’s foreign policy, this is a careful balancing act; a shade of grey, rather than black and white; context and fact-dependent, rather than being ideologically-wedded to one extreme position. Just as Jefferson did, Obama will pursue policies about which he harbours significant fears, if and when he calculates that they are in America’s best interests. This is because, as many observers have noted, Obama is a “results-driven pragmatist ... attuned to complexity and nuance” (Milne 2012). He is the fox following on from his predecessor hedgehog.

B. America's racial problems have not melted away merely because Obama has spent eight years in the White House. Far from it.

Indeed, the insurmountable problem for Obama was that he reached the mountaintop on day one of his presidency.

Achieving anything on the racial front that surpassed becoming the country's first black president was always going to be daunting. Compounding that problem were the unrealistically high expectations surrounding his presidency.

His election triumph is 2008 was also misinterpreted as an act of national atonement for the original sin of slavery and the stain of segregation.

Yet Obama did not win the election because he was a black man. It was primarily because a country facing an economic crisis and embroiled in two unpopular wars was crying out for change.

Doubtless there have been substantive reforms. His two black attorneys general, Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, have revitalised the work of the justice department's civil rights division, which was dormant during the Bush years.

The Affordable Healthcare Act, or Obamacare, as it was inevitably dubbed, cut the black uninsured rate by a third.

Race relations have arguably become more polarised and tenser since 20 January 2009. Though smaller in scale and scope, the demonstrations sparked by police shootings of unarmed black men were reminiscent of the turbulence of the 1960s.

Public opinion surveys highlight this racial restlessness. Not long after he took office in 2009, a New York Times/CBS News poll suggested two-thirds of Americans regarded race relations as generally good. In the midst of last summer's racial turbulence, that poll found there had been a complete reversal. Now 69% of Americans assessed race relations to be mostly bad.

An oft-heard criticism of Obama is that he has failed to bring his great rhetorical skills to bear on the American dilemma, and prioritised the LGBT community's campaign for equality at the expense of the ongoing black struggle.

I tried to explain little elaborate, your ratings help me!