Anthony Barnett is the founder of openDemocracy.net.

A social entrepreneur of wide experience, Anthony helped launch Charter 88 in 1988 and was its first Director. Generating widespread support he turned it into a movement for the democratic reform of Britain (at the end of the 90s the Telegraph described it as the UK's "most influential pressure group of the decade"). Anthony is also a writer and journalist. He is the author of Iron Britannia; Soviet Freedom and This Time; and co-author and editor of among other books, Aftermath: the Struggle of Vietnam and Cambodia; Power and the Throne, Town and Country and a considerable range of articles and pamphlets covering politics and culture, such as (with Peter Carty), The Athenian Option – radical reform for the House of Lords (Demos, 1998) and the television film, England's Henry Moore. He writes regularly for openDemocracy and contributes to many of its debates.

Recent articles

In the sixth part of his exchange with KA Dilday, Anthony Barnett realises that Obama's victory was hardly as comprehensive as it seemed. Catch up with part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5. 

Dear Kay,

You are right to mull it over. There are big issues to be addressed, from celebrity to Afghanistan not to speak of the recession. But not immediately. I had a shock about 36 hours afterwards. I'd known - I'd put it as strongly as that - since January that Barack Obama could win and that in his case his race would not prevent this. I suppose I must have been too confident that he would. It was only afterwards that I suddenly saw how close it was. Obama needed Lehman Brothers to turn all the "palling around with terrorists" junk into froth.

One American in three did not vote at all! Most Americans did not vote for Obama. He got 66 million to McCain's 58 million votes. Nearly a quarter of the US's 300 million plus population are under 18, still leaving over 230 million of which less than 130 million voted. Obama got the actual votes of barely more than one in four American adults. He and his supporters must do something about the extent of what remains, in effect, a form of disenfanchisement in the USA.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK):  In a brief post in the Times David Lammy MP, the Minister for Skills, who met Obama some years back at Harvard writes about the impact of his election. He says,

In the end politics is not the art of the possible: far from it. It is the art of making things possible.

There is a very important issue here with New Labour. Indeed, Lammy was the first member of the government to engage with the argument about the political class (we reproduced it in OK) and has a broader understanding of this than Hazel Blears. But traditional, Clinton-loving, triangulating New Labour had a very different 'practical' approach. He reports,

I came back from America and told people that I believed the first black president was already waiting to step forward. They thought I was mad.

Who could those 'they' be, I wonder!

In the fourth part of his exchange with KA Dilday, Anthony Barnett argues that Obama sees the US as part of the world, not apart from it. Catch up with part 1, part 2, and part 3.  

Dear Kay,

Senator Obama - and I SO hope by tomorrow morning it will be "President-elect" Obama - agrees with you. In an otherwise masterful opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, he writes, 

I'll finally finish the fight against bin Laden and the al Qaeda terrorists who attacked us on 9/11, build new partnerships to defeat the threats of the 21st century, and restore our moral standing so that America remains the last, best hope of Earth.

Right up to the implication of your last clause I agree with you that 

What Obama has demonstrated goes beyond the example that, no matter how far-fetched it seems, one can achieve one's dreams. He has shown people that there are many different ways to be black; that one can be comfortable and at home with people of all races and religions; that intellectualism is valuable to anyone of any race; and that America has done it again.

I'd say he has done more in that he has shown people of all colours, including white, that there are many different ways of being themselves, that their skin and background is not their fate. (And intellectualism is valuable - hurray! Have you tried to say that here in Britain?)

Here is the main point: America is special, yes. It is different. It is unique in its own way. But so too in their ways are all other countries. America is especially special because it is so powerful. But this is not inspiring - look what it has done with its power, from Vietnam to Iraq. Yes, Obama represents another America from Bush. The immense importance of his campaign is that it means one cannot say about George W Bush's Guantanamo-USA, "That's it folks - there is no other America".

The United States presidential race is the most exciting and energising in years. Barack Obama has made it so, and in a way that opens a new era of political possibility, says openDemocracy's founder Anthony Barnett.

(This article was first published on 6 February 2008)