Has Obama made history by giving coverage for the uncovered? Some castigate him as a communist and others as a comprador, writes Gamal Nkrumah "Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family conceals fierce conflicts of interest." -- Howard Zinn The comprador, the indigenous colonial subject who acted as an agent for advancing the interests of his colonial master, is not a particularly complimentary image for the first United States president of colour attempting to make history. Is it a cruel and uncalled-for slur? Or is he a brilliant strategist as his fans and even some of his detractors proclaim? Only history, or time, will tell. US President Barack Obama must break a habit of an entire political career, not by building consensus on Capitol Hill, but by risking a real rendez vous with history. He has an eye on his historical legacy, but he is uncertain as to who exactly would secure his name as a hero for eternity -- big business or the underdog? The two together, it cannot be. For never the twain shall meet. Obama, presumably, is savvy enough to comprehend that. To pretend otherwise is the folly of follies, preposterousness personified. "But one man's courage is another's folly," as Britain's Telegraph so aptly put it. Obama, after all, has "put his personal prestige on the line". The Congressional Budget Office projected a $1,200 billion fiscal deficit for 2009. At any rate, the actual figure was $1,400 billion -- the biggest since 1945. Undaunted by the CBO bombshell, Obama and his team of technocrats pushed through their "big bang" package as a winning campaign ticket. A key pillar of the big bang, of course, was universal healthcare and stop "waste and fraud" in the Medicare and Medicaid systems. What they glossed over was the quality and cost of their purported coverage plan. The sad fact is that 48 million Americans do not have access to any form of healthcare. Needless to say, they are the poorest and most vulnerable segments of American society, including African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and other ethnic and racial minorities. This crisis is a rare chance at instituting genuine reform. It is a moral outrage that the superpower that purports to uphold and defend human rights throughout the world is incapable of providing proper healthcare to the neediest of its citizens. It was up to Obama, the first African American president in the history of the US, to resolve this moral predicament once and for all. He proudly declared that he was ready to take up the challenge. But that, some estimates warn, is the equivalent of laughing up some $100 billion annually from state coffers for medical health insurance -- roughly the same cost as the war in Iraq. Obama did throw down the gauntlet. But his detractors took his impressive display of bravura with a pinch of salt. Among his critics were neoconservatives, but there were also level-headed left-of-centre Americans among his detractors. His corporate all-star team of appointees, they opined, conjured up Obama's "big bang" plan. It was designed precisely to ensure "private insurers' monopoly over healthcare," as Howard Dean, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee so succinctly put it in an editorial in the Washington Post. It was a scheme to "transfer millions of taxpayer dollars to private corporations". In other words, they took umbrage at the suggestion that Obama was championing the cause of the poor. "The result is legislation that has been crafted to get votes, not reform healthcare," Dean concluded. Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi masterminded the Democratic drive to "corral a wafer thin majority" in favour of the Obama healthcare bill, "arm-twisting and pleading with the waverers" as Britain's Financial Times succinctly put it. Healthcare reform, Obama-style, is therefore seen as something of a charade. On the face of it, it appears as if the president has taken up the cudgel on behalf of the poor. It looks as if he has forced the elite and elected officials to enact progressive legislation. As if he is wreaking vengeance on the powers that be. But Democrats, of course, are not Communists. And Obama is no socialist. "It will end up being the smart thing to do politically, because I believe that good policy is good politics," Obama insists. Whatever that means, and whichever way it is read it will result, hopefully, in senior citizens getting a $250 rebate on medicine purchased, and young adults moving from university to the workplace will be permitted to stay on their parents' plans until they turn 26. Now if that is what is meant by "good politics" then that is good indeed. Some 32 million Americans will benefit, which is also good. It must be stressed, however, that initially at least 17 million Americans will not benefit from Obama's new healthcare law. "The reality is that in American terms it was a left-wing measure," the Telegraph noted. The accentuation of Obama's healthcare reform objective of reducing costs goes hand-in-hand with the skyrocketing multiplication of the costs of federal health programmes. Obama, however, adamantly refuses to shelve the promise that propelled him to triumphant entry into the White House. Obama is a hard nut to crack. He has an instinctive understanding of the ways of Washington. He has an inkling of the machinations therein. He is neither King Kong, nor king-maker. "One of the dangers in the White House, based on my reading of history, is that you get wrapped up in group think," Obama noted when he was still president-elect. "You've got one part of Washington which is a company town, all about government, and is generally pretty prosperous. And then, you've got another half of DC that is going through enormous challenges. I want to see if we can bring those two Washington DCs together," he wistfully remarked to ABC before moving into the Oval Office. I frankly find it difficult to fathom how a perspicacious politician of Obama's calibre cannot perceive the answer to his rather ridiculous question well in advance. Obama's emphasis on eliminating the federal budget deficit is somewhat portentous as far as the poor are concerned. "After all this wheeling and dealing, we still have a cost-raising, tax-increasing bill," reads a statement by the House Republican campaign committee "Stop the madness." But why is the healthcare bill mad? Is it because it purports to tax the rich, or is it because it cannot cure the poor? The bulk of big business in the US is behind universal healthcare provision. Ten states plan a lawsuit over Obama's healthcare bill, Florida Attorney-General Bill McCollum ominously announced. Among those states are some of the richest and the most right-wing. These states include Florida, Texas and Pennsylvania. The Republican smear campaign dubbed Obama's new healthcare law "socialised medicine". The task at hand is at once Herculean and indeterminate, gargantuan and unconvincing. Obama is indeed "running on overdraft" and the resultant "monumental loss in the Massachusetts Senate" spells potential political disaster for the Democrats. The loss of the "safe" Kennedy seat in Massachusetts, one of the ardent bastions of liberalism in the US, augurs ill for the Democrats, with far-reaching national ramifications. What beastly world do we live in where providing universal healthcare in the wealthiest nation on earth is viewed as problematic? What prospects then lay in store for the destiny of the peoples of the poorest and least developed countries of the world? Indeed, as Howard Zinn once said, "War and jingoism might postpone, but could not fully suppress the class anger that came from realities of ordinary life."
