Time for change

One morning last July, when sitting in the living room of my future in-laws I watched one of the few political speeches which engaged me without making the cynical dark side rear its ugly head. The person making the speech was Barack Obama. He spoke about returning hope to the American people, about re-discovering the ideals of the American Dream - which are essentially the ideals of almost every tribe and tongue on Earth, about re-engaging America with the world. He made a lot of sense. I even dragged my fiancee onto the couch to watch it with me - my fiancee having never shown any interest in politics at all.

Watching that speech made me realise that this man is the best hope for America at this key turning point in history. The very things that his opponents pick up as weaknesses are in fact strengths, and harnessed properly give him the opportunity to radically re-shape America, to create a "more perfect union". Barack Obama is the walking talking melting pot. Half Kenyan and half White American he is in many ways a post-race politician, and while his detractors raise the race issue, they simply show themselves to be racist.

Here is a man so skilled in soaring rhetoric that he has engaged the hearts and minds of countless young people across the US and brought them into a system which many saw as failing and irrelevant. That in itself is a change worth celebrating - when citizens lose contact with the political system that governs society, they slowly lose their voices - society is like a choir, if you don't sing then why are you there?

As you can probably guess I am something of a fan of the senator from Illinois. As a Brit, I can't vote, but as a Brit moving to the US next year, I dearly hope that the president will be Barack Obama, I dearly hope that America can look beyond the shade of a man's skin and re-discover the values that made their nation great. The world looks to America for leadership, America it seems after 8 years of George Bush is looking for a true leader.