After Barack Obama’s surprising performance in the Iowa Caucus, I made some notes. I added some observations on January 3, 2008. The more Obama gained ground, the more I couldn’t refrain from looking at what was going on in the US from the recent experience of Bolivia and the parallels between Evo Morales Ayma and Barack Obama in spite, of course, of the enormous differences between the two countries. However, the “two countries” belong to the same racial histories of “the Americas”, that is, South, North, Central Americas and the Caribbean.

When the Presidential campaign started, last year, I would have unconsciously inverted the order. I would have said, “My views of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and Evo Morales.”At that point I thought, as many others, that Obama has a lot of potential but lacks experience while Clinton entered the candidacy with a lot of experience and questionable credibility. However—I told myself—no Presidency from now on could be worst than the one of George W. Bush and his team, those who are politically defunct as well as a couple of those who still remain in place in political agony. I entertained for a while the fantasy that a Clinton-Obama ticket would be a good team since there would be a mutual compensation of experiences and credibility. Furthermore, the ticket would bring together a white woman with a black man, something that has been unheard of at least in the history of the US.

Then I forgot about my fantasy and just followed the campaign, who was getting how much money and who was moving up and down in the polls.

And Iowa came.

When I heard on the car radio that Obama came out in first place I said to myself, “Bah!, que c’est bizarre.” A mixture of Argentine reaction mixed with a French expression I learned during my years of graduate student in France. Then I read an op-ed in La Nación (a good and traditional Argentine newspaper leaning to the right) by Mario Diament in which he interpreted the outcome of the Iowa Caucus as “the racial revolution in the US.” Then I read David Brooks in the New York Times who manifested his surprise describing in Iowa as “two earthquakes”: Obama coming ahead among the Democrat and Mike Huckabee among the Republicans. And I was still far from Bob Herbert’s exhilaration describing the “Barack Obama phenomenon.”

Nevertheless, and whatever the result of New Hampshire’s primary next Tuesday (January 8, 2008) will be, the Iowa’s Caucus has planted a flag in the political and social imaginary of the U.S. On a different scale, it looks very similar to the situation in Bolivia—in 2005– when it became clear that Evo Morales entered the political and social imaginary of the country as an earthquake.

Now—apparently—the time has come to think about racism-genderism and political theory or, better yet, about racism and epistemology (that is the racial foundations of the principle and construction of knowledge in the Western world, from Machiavelli to Hobbes and Leo Strauss). To have Hillary Clinton as President would be another chapter of a general tendency in Europe and the Americas: Angela Merkl in Germany; Michele Bachelet in Chile; Christina Fernández de Kirtchner in Argentina. To have Hillary Clinton as President would mean that, finally, the US citizens realized that they are already behind in trusting a woman with leading their country. In other words, to have Hillary Clinton as President of the US would mean something entirely different than having, just for the sake of the example, Angela Davis. On the other hand, if the final stretch of the race would be between Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice, one can surmise that the color line will not make much of a difference. The difference will remain at the level of the political parties (Republican or Democrat’s agendas) but both imagined Presidents would remain within the realm of Western concept of nation-State in Western political theory.

Enter Barack Obama. Would a black man make a difference over a white or a black woman as president of the U.S.? Condoleezza Rice has given ample proof through her life that her main goal was to show, to herself first and to the world second, that a black woman is as capable as a white man and equal to a white woman. She succeeded and I admire that determination. However, having a capable and brilliant black woman entering in the structure of a the modern State doesn’t change the fact that the modern Western State was conceived from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, implemented and controlled by white men. This is just a statistic, not essentialism. And it doesn’t mean either that white males perversely imagined the structure and politics of the State at their own image and sameness. Honest liberals assumed that what was good for them was good for Western and Christian Europe and what was good for Europe was good for the world. If you do not believe me, just go re-read with this caveat forewarning in mind both Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws and John Locke’s The Second Treatise of Government.

I believe that the enthusiasm showed by many, and among them the three columnists I mentioned above, has indeed some grounding. However, having a black man as president representing the Democratic Party or (just for the sake of the argument) having a black woman like Condoleezza Rice as could-have-been a candidate for the Republican Party it may change something but not much. What it changes is that we are at the point in which a black woman or a black man can take care of the business of the State designed, implemented and controlled for over four hundred years by white men. Tomasi di Lampedusa’s dictum remains as valid today as a century ago: “Things have to change in order to remain as they are.”

I share Shalbe Steele’s view although I am not sure about his conclusion. He may or may not win, to early to say. Steele thinks that Barack Obama cannot win the presidential elections. Why?

Steele distinguishes, among Blacks politicians, between bargainers and challengers. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are challengers. They can hardly become president of the U.S. Barack Obama is a bargainer. To his credit, he is the first bargainer in the sphere of the State. Another bargainer is Bill Cosby. But Bill Cosby, as well as Angela Davis, does not operate in the sphere of the State but in the sphere of society. The former is an entertainer in the civil society; the later, is an activist in the political society. Steele thinks that although being a black bargainer is not still enough to win. He is seen, among Blacks, as not Black enough while among Whites, he is still Black.

But let’s suppose Obama will win; that he will be nominated as the candidate of the Democratic Party and be elected as the next president of the U.S. Here is where Steele’s may be right: Obama talks about “changes”but it is not clear what changes he wants to make and toward what ends. He is note different to all other Democratic candidates who are also talking about changes. However, the difference Obama should make is related to his being the only Black candidate among Whites, men and woman. Because of that, one would expect that when Obama talks about “change”he means something different in relation to the other candidates. And here may be the problem. The problem is simply that Obama is still operating within the frame of party identity politics, that is, within the frames and expectations of the Democratic Party. Let me explain.

Evo Morales, in Bolivia, cracked the code of the liberal State and capitalist economy. As expected, he has to confront right wing politicians, wealthy landowners and transnational corporations. He is a challenger who brings to the foreground the Indian conception of social and economic organization. He is not proposing to replace the liberal tradition, which is endorsed by a considerable number of Bolivians, but to insert Indian traditions, into the reorganization of the State and of the economy. Thus the concept of a pluri-cultural State is grounded in this shift in doing politics. However, Evo Morales has to confront also the question of genderism, whom define themselves as “the exiled from neo-liberalism.” While Evo Morales cracked the code of the (neo) liberal State in the domain of racism by legitimizing Indian knowledge and postulating the need to de-colonize the state and the economy, the political society of women contest that decolonization is not possible without de-patriarcalization, as “Mujeres Creando” (a conglomerate of women across sexual and ethnic identities) would have it. In spite of the confrontations between decolonization and de-patriarcalization, something remains clear: both Evo Morales and Mujeres Creando are bringing to the foreground new ways of thinking and doing based on the memories and experiences of Indians and women, both South American white and of color. What Evo Morales has, Barack Obama hasn’t.

Let’s suppose now that Obama will be the next president of the US and that he will act as an honest liberal (as John Rawls has it). In circumstances which are extremely different (such as Bolivia and the US), Obama would confront problems similar to those Morales is confronting, from the right of course, but from Black challengers such as Sharpton and Jackson. He is already being critiqued by both. One would expect that he could be confronted also by women’s organizations in the political society, both white and of color. And here is where Steele has a strong point: Obama doesn’t have a radical proposal as Evo Morales has. If he wins, things will remain as they are. While even if Evo Morales looses his position as president, what he achieved already is a landmark. Evo Morales showed us that economy based on accumulation and states based solely on (neo) liberal principles are indeed deadly. Economies of reciprocity and political philosophies re-inscribing models of social organization that has been cast out since the European Renaissance are indeed of the essence. I am not preaching the return of a pure Indian state or a pure Islamic state. I am just saying that a pure Western liberal state is not longer sustainable.

Transformations cannot be done within the existing system of thoughts and ethics in which political economy and political theory are imbedded. Transformations cannot be achieved within a system of thoughts and ethics that is not concerned with living well (as Evo Morales will have it) with living better than my neighbor; a system of thoughts and ethics in which employment is related to consumption. If Obama wins as Morales did in Bolivia–it would be certainly an important step. It will show that white males are not the only one capable of conducting the State. But if Obama wins, most likely he will be absorbed by the system while Morales has shown that another way of thinking and of being is necessary.