BARACK OBAMA: Post-War American Presidents (12)

[This is the final piece in a series about the 12 Post-War American Presidents from a British perspective.]

The election of Barack Obama as President in 2008 was a giant step and symbol for Black Americans and a moment of final acceptance of racial equality for all Americans. During his tenure Obama has presided honestly and with due gravitas in his high office. There have been legislative achievements and a notably cautious overseas policy. The initial euphoria has subsided as the humdrum necessities of state take centre stage and there may be some disappointment that his Presidency has not been more creative. Yet a legacy that now an able Black American can be elected decisively, then re-elected, and conduct a respected Presidency is in itself surely a substantial achievement. 

President Barack Obama

Barack Hussein Obama II (1961 -  ) was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, the son of his namesake Barack Obama I and Ann Dunham. Obama is described as a “Black” President but his antecedents are far from typical of the black African-American. He would be more accurately described as “multi-racial”. His mother was Ann Dunham (1942-95), a white American from Wichita, Kansas. She was a young student at the University of Hawaii when in 1960 she met Barack Obama senior, an overseas economics student of Luo origin from Kenya. She was 3 months pregnant when they married in 1961 and he said he had divorced his first wife in Kenya; this was not true. After separations they divorced in 1964. Obama senior returned to Kenya but was not an attentive father; he made one 4-week visit to Hawaii in 1971 when our Obama was 11 which he fondly remembered and honoured in his 1995 memoir Dreams with my Father. Obama senior eventually had difficulty holding down a job in Kenya and his life was erratic. He died in a car accident in Kenya in 1982.

Ann Dunham’s parents were very supportive and looked after young Obama in Hawaii when Ann met an Indonesian student Lolo Soetoro, a geographer. They married in 1965 and she took Barack with him in 1967 for 4 years in Jakarta, where Lolo worked as a government cartographer and Barack went to local schools. Ann had a daughter Maya in 1971 but mother and children then returned to Hawaii to the children’s grandparents. Ann and Maya set off for Indonesia in 1975 and Ann stayed there for most of the rest of her life, doing anthropological fieldwork, even though she divorced Lolo in 1980. She died of cancer in 1995. Meanwhile Barack had stayed with his grandparents and finished his education in the United States. It is surprising Barack weathered this rather fragmented childhood so well – he spoke especially of his love for his influential mother.

Grandfather, Mother, Maya and Barack

Father Barack Obama Senior

Stepfather Lolo Soetoro

 

After high school in Hawaii, gifted Barack went for 2 years to Occidental College in Los Angeles before going on to Columbia University, New York, where he studied political science, graduating BA in 1983. He was involved in a campaign protesting against the state of the NY subway but his real political apprenticeship grew from his working for the Chicago Developing Communities Project 1985—8. In 1988 he entered the Harvard Law School, becoming an editor and then the first black president of the Harvard Law Review in 1989 finally graduating magna cum laude in 1991. These years saw Obama joining the intellectual elite.

Between 1991 and 2005, Obama launched his political career while also working as a Lecturer at Chicago Law School and becoming a civil rights attorney. In 1996 he became a Democrat Illinois State Senator, being busy and prominent in liberal causes but failing to be elected to the US House in 2000. He resigned in 2004 to fight for the Washington Senate seat; he won in a landslide and became a prominent Democratic candidate for a future Presidential attempt. 

A significant personal event was his marriage in 1992 to fellow-lawyer Michelle Robinson from Chicago, who graduated from Princeton and Harvard and has a post-graduate degree too. Michelle’s background is far more typical of aspiring black Americans and she is perhaps even more charismatic than Barack. She is certainly a substantial political asset. They have two teenaged daughters, Maya and Sasha.

First Lady Michelle Obama

As the junior senator from Illinois, Obama was a prominent legislator supporting inter alia more transparency in government spending, orderly immigration and weapons reduction but maintaining his opposition to and doubts about the Iraq war. 

By 2007 he was fundraising and planning his bid for the Presidency in a fairly open field. As the primaries loomed, his main rival was Hillary Clinton but the Obama campaign outvoted her and she withdrew at the 2008 Democratic convention at Denver throwing her support behind Obama. His running mate was Joe Biden, senator from Delaware, who was thought to connect better with blue-collar Americans and who had developed extensive foreign affairs contacts. Obama delivered an eloquent acceptance speech at Mile High Stadium in front of 80,000 spectators and a vast TV audience.

Obama’s presidential campaign emphasised universal healthcare, energy independence, control of lobbyists and Iraq withdrawal. He was ranged against John McCain and Sarah Palin and initially the Republicans polled well, with women especially. Obama was thought weaker on economics. The Lehman crisis was in full flow, but when it emerged at a White House meeting that neither President Bush nor John McCain had even read a 3-page memo from Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson outlining his recovery proposals, well-briefed Obama gained in confidence. The outcome was a decisive Obama victory of 365 to 173 in the Electoral College.

Obama in full flow

I will not catalogue all the various events so far of the Obama administration. Suffice to say, the so-called “Obamacare” healthcare law passed in 2010 is the keystone achievement broadening the availability and affordability of medical services at very substantial cost to the Federal government. Measures to stimulate the economy seem to have helped the USA to exit earlier than many from the Great Recession. Congress was pro-Democratic from 2008 to 2011 but the rise of the Republican Tea Party group won voters to the opposition and the House has turned Republican since 2011 and the Senate is very closely balanced. Obama has not been able to push through his legislative programme without substantial amendment, although there have been useful measures on lobbying, transparency and minority rights. He did enough to defeat Mitt Romney’s challenge in 2012.

Foreign affairs have been as frustrating and unpredictable as usual, with Hillary Clinton performing sensibly as Secretary of State in the first term. Despite Obama’s campaign pledge, Guantanamo prison remains open – Congress not providing the money to close it. US troops have been withdrawn from Iraq and much reduced in Afghanistan, but neither country is stable. Osama bin Laden, author of 9/11, was eventually tracked down and killed in Pakistan in 2011 to general approval. The Arab Spring lost the West some solid allies; Gaddafi in Libya did not go quietly and a mainly Anglo-French NATO group removed him, with the USA participating in the early stages. Libya still lacks a coherent government. The rise of the Islamic fundamentalist ISIL may draw Western military forces back to the Middle East, to our despair. Russia worked up a crisis in Western-leaning Ukraine resulting in icy relations and severe sanctions likely to disrupt the world economy, if not worse. The Chinese economic miracle may have peaked and the Chinese are not notably cooperative on the world stage.  Second term Secretary of State John Kerry has spent ineffectual months talking to Israel and the Palestinians but a settlement seems far away and Gaza regularly explodes.

Joe Biden, President Obama and John Kerry - The A-Team

                                               

 Obama is an excellent speaker and his orations can energise the young and idealistic and inspire many others. But it is a gift earning diminishing returns, as Winston Churchill discovered. If nothing much actually happens on the ground, the fine phrases, the rolling words and the rousing calls for unity sound more and more hollow. Obama may actually speak too much. Such oratory also separates him from the ordinary American: it is a highbrow skill. When his pleas are ignored, Obama may easily discount his less educated compatriots. There is a touch of arrogance about Obama, an understandable air of superiority - and that superiority is very real – though it is always better to conceal it in these democratic days.

Recent weeks have been darkened by the racial troubles in Ferguson, Missouri, and in New York City. A combination of trigger-happy cops and disaffected black youths is always combustible. The revelations of institutionalised CIA torture have also muddied the good name of America and damaged its long-earned esteem. One must hope these clouds are rapidly dispersed.

Now in the “lame-duck” phase of his Presidency, Obama may have run out of steam; he plays too much golf (more rounds in 2014 than Tiger Woods, it is said!) Yet there is no doubt that Obama’s Presidency has been historic, that he has real achievements to his name and he has brought intellectual distinction to his Office.

SMD

14.12.14

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2014

JUDI DENCH and BRIAN RIX: Celebrities of Stage and Screen (17)

[This is an occasional series describing British artistes who found fame on stage or in the movies]

In the notably self-centred acting profession, my two subjects stand out for their generosity to others. My first artiste, a Quaker, is a globally recognised actress, supreme in the great classics of the English-speaking stage with a glittering career in films and television over a huge range: she is now 80 and still performing.  My second is a quintessentially English artiste, now 90, (both indeed are from Yorkshire) who gave innocent pleasure and laughter to millions as a purveyor of farce in London over 30 years and won further fame and respect as a tireless campaigner for improvements in mental health and in the care of the handicapped.

Dame Judi Dench

Judi Dench (1934 - ) was born in Heworth, Yorks, daughter of a doctor GP who covered the York Theatre where her mother was a wardrobe mistress. Judi attended the Mount School in York, where she became a Quaker and appeared as an amateur in local Mystery Plays; attracted to the profession she graduated in 1957 from the Central School of Speech and Drama – a class-mate was Vanessa Redgrave. Judi had her stage debut at the Old Vic as Juliet in 1957 in Romeo and Juliet and never looked back, playing the same role for Zeffirelli in New York in 1960. Rather cruelly (and inaccurately) she had been told by some director that she did not have the looks to be a great actress but she pressed on regardless.

Young Judi Dench in 1968

For 20 years Judi delighted on the stage for the Royal Shakespeare Company (her Lady Macbeth became a classic trademark and she was a memorable Cleopatra) and for the National Theatre but she was also a notable musical success as Sally Bowles in Cabaret in 1968. She branched out into TV sitcoms playing alongside her husband since 1971 actor Michael Williams in A Fine Romance from 1981-84 followed later by As Time goes By with Geoffrey Palmer. A flood of awards was won, BAFTAs, best actress and so on which it would be wearying to chronicle. 

Her film career was slower to take off. Her roles were supporting ones like playing opposite her friend Maggie Smith in A Room with a View and she did not play the lead in a film until her Queen Victoria opposite Billy Connolly in Mrs Brown (1997).

Judi in A Room with a View

Judi as Queen Victoria in Mrs Brown

As the years passed, Judi became identified with roles of formidable, if sometimes vulnerable, ladies of a certain age. She was a natural for Wilde’s Lady Bracknell, Austen’s Lady Catherine de Bourgh and as Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love (1998).

As Lady Catherine de Bourgh

As Queen Elizabeth I

She continues to bring distinction to whatever role she plays. She was a splendid Matty Jenkyns in the BBC serialisation of Mrs Gaskell’s Cranford: she illuminated the surprise 2012 hit film Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and was affecting as the searching mother in Philomena. 

 

Global celebrity was hers after appearing from 1995 in 7 James Bond films as M, culminating in Skyfall a mega-box office success.

Judi as M faces an enquiry in Skyfall

Throughout her career she has been active in good causes for the disabled, for deaf children, for threatened tribal communities in Colombia and Botswana and as a sponsor of small, barely viable theatres. The honours heaped upon her have included becoming a Dame in 1988 and a Companion of Honour in 2005. She suffers from macular degeneration in her eyes and increasing deafness, but dismisses any thought of retirement and indeed now has a new man in her widowhood, wild-life enthusiast David Mills.

A final glimpse of this intelligent and good woman comes from writer Alan Bennett, at a poetry reading of the usually lugubrious works of Philip Larkin;

I have read “The Trees” often in recitals but once, when I was reading with Judi Dench, she was assigned the poem, the last line of which is:

“Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.”

I had read the poem umpteen times without sensing the obvious point that each “afresh” should be differently inflected, which was how Judi read it. It was as if a bud was opening….

                                                ------------------------------------

Brian Rix (1924- ) is an entirely different type of acting celebrity, much loved in his time, but not accorded much appreciation in more highbrow theatrical circles. He was a master of farce, in its rumbustious English incarnation, not replete with the subtleties of Feydeau, and since he often ended up with his trousers round his ankles his theatre was the home of the honest belly-laugh.

Brian Rix

Brian Rix was born in Cottingham in the East Riding of Yorkshire, the fourth child of a well-to-do local shipping and oil trading businessman, based in Hull. He attended prestigious Bootham School in York and, his mother being keen on amateur dramatics and running a local operatic society, Brian became more interested in the theatre than in his first love, cricket. Aged 18 in 1942, he joined Donald Wolfit’s theatrical company, debuting as Sebastian in Twelfth Night and later in rep in Harrogate; he was called up to the RAF but eventually saw the war out as a volunteer “Bevin Boy” in the Doncaster coal mines.

Returning to the stage, Brian became an actor-manager in 1947, running rep in Yorkshire. He acquired in 1949 the rights to the farce Reluctant Heroes - a comedy about an army boot camp. Rix married Scottish actress Elspet Gray in 1949 – they were together until she died in 2013. They persuaded the owners of the Whitehall Theatre to run the play and it was a huge success. Rix and his company were to mount 5 Whitehall farces, Reluctant Heroes, Dry Rot, Simple Spymen, One for the Pot and Chase Me, Comrade all of which ran for 3 to 4 years. They stayed until 1966 and then moved to the Garrick Theatre where their farces were somewhat less successful; Rix finally retired from the stage in 1977.

Brian’s stage persona was usually a gormless Northern character. I remember him in the madcap film Up to your Neck, where Rix, a modest naval rating, was charged with controlling a captured Japanese submarine and when asked by an anxious Ronald Shiner if he could cope, answered in quavering Yorkshire tones “Well, my Uncle used to drive a tram in Bradford!”

Rix in Dry Rot

Brian Rix’s Whitehall farces became an institution and visitors would go for a good laugh just as once they had enjoyed the Crazy Gang. For 20 years Brian also produced farces - 90 in all – for BBC TV and they were wildly popular, despite their often creaking plots and predictable outcomes. I certainly remember in the 1950s seeing Dry Rot at the Whitehall about three crooked bookies, with Brian and his fellow-farceur Leo Franklyn in top form, and laughing like a drain!

Brian and his wife Elspet had their first daughter Shelley (1951-2005) who sadly was born with Down’s Syndrome. In the uncaring attitude of the time their doctor advised them to find her an asylum and forget about her; she was not capable of being educated and she was referred to as “a mongol”. This went against all their instincts and for years Brian was a tireless fund-raiser for the mentally handicapped and campaigner for their rights and well-being. After retiring from the theatre he became Secretary-General of Mencap in 1980. Raised to the peerage as Lord Rix in 1992, Brian has moved numerous amendments and improvements in legislation from the crossbenches; public opinion has been transformed over the years thanks to his and others’ efforts. He is now Life President of Mencap. 

Brian and Elspet Rix

Brian Rix the actor made the nation laugh. Brian Rix the campaigner moved the nation to care deeply for those who are utterly helpless. For both these gifts he is held in honour.

SMD

9.12.14

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2014