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Charlie Beckett

January 20th, 2009

Obama the Blairite?

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Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Charlie Beckett

January 20th, 2009

Obama the Blairite?

0 comments

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

It was, indeed, an awesome moment. Such a man at such a time. And he dealt beautifully with the fluff at his swearing in.

But Obama’s a Blairite isn’t he? All that stuff about the end of old politics, doing ‘what works’, no more dispute about big or small politics, no more arguments about the market.

Surprising, too, was the stress on ‘winning’ the war on terror (although he didn’t use that phrase) and how ‘we will defeat you’. Despite that, the Biblical-sounding injunction that “The line of tribe shall soon disolve” was a call for cosmopolitanism and cohabitation with, for example, Islam.

As a media event, it showed how modern media has the ability to respond to those events that pull together much of the world in one place. In bars, sitting rooms, and offices  around the world people have been gathering in a very old-fashioned way to view one thing, at one time.

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Charlie Beckett

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