The Benetton candidate

When R.A. Butler, quoting Bismarck, described politics as the ‘art of the possible’, he was spelling out the pragmatist’s creed. Yet, if nothing else, Barack Obama’s rise to become the Democrats’ candidate for the White House shows that ‘the possible’ can still be extraordinary. Only four years ago, Obama was a mere state senator in Illinois, a rookie legislator with a keen intellect and a bright future. Now, as his party gathers for its convention in Denver, Colorado, he is only two and half months away from the presidential election that could make him the most powerful man in the world.

Whatever deals are being stitched up behind the scenes, this convention will be a pageant in celebration of the Obama Myth, a cross between the Nuremberg rallies and an aromatherapy festival. The candidate’s biography — the son of a black Kenyan and a white American who rose to the very top — will be presented as a metaphor for multiracial America’s longing to put behind it the politics of division, race hate and culture wars.