© MSNBC
Dear Mr. Senator,
Two and a half days still remain toward November 4, 2008, a day that promises to be one of the most amazing, pivotal landmarks in postwar American history (I hope that my brilliant UCD colleagues specializing in American history would forgive my hyperbolic pronouncement). In spite of a barrage of learned prognoses and predictions that declaim such possibility, you might still lose this election. It is simply the nature of the beast called politics that it could pull the rug from under your feet at the least expected moment. You must also forgive me for perhaps giving too much credit than I should to the willful blindness of an “ordinary citizen” in recognizing duplicity, hypocrisy and intolerance, even when he or she is directly gazing into the latter’s gaping maws, forked tongues and bloody teeth.
The ignorant, misleading and frankly hateful propagandistic nonsense that were propagated, on the TV, in the internet and through mailing services against you, is something that I, as a Korean having grown up during the years of military dictatorship, find despairingly familiar. Even then, the glaringly and openly McCarthy-ist tone your opponent’s campaign and those who seek to discredit you have adopted took me by surprise. Do they believe that ordinary Americans are so ignorant of the world history, and of the way the world actually is today, that they will equate progressive taxation with “socialism?” Those who know American politics better than me reassure me that this type of language is born out of sheer desperation and will have no “traction” in this year. I hope they are right, for the sake of the United States and the ideals and values it stands for. But throughout my life, I have been disappointed too many times: lies and slanders, even thoroughly preposterous ones, always seem capable of planting seeds of doubt in otherwise perfectly intelligent people, when oft-repeated. So, I will not rush into congratulating you for a victory that you and your superb campaign staff have fought so hard for, and, at least I believe, so richly deserve.
Not yet, at any rate.
Your rise from a junior senator, a man of color with a “funny name,” as you yourself good-naturedly have acknowledged many times, to a credible presidential candidate for the Democratic Party, and to a living depository of the hopes, dreams and ideals of so many American citizens, now standing right at the threshold of becoming the first African-American (or biracial) President of the United States, has been a stunning spectacle. No fictional drama could have competed against it. I am told that every American writer dreams of writing a Great American Novel, but what novelist could have concocted such a compelling and moving story as yours?
Truth be told, I have been an early supporter of your campaign, when the majority of Koreans and Korean-Americans around me had no doubt that Senator Hilary Clinton (a remarkable person, a pioneer in her own right) would capture the Democratic Party nomination and some even considered you a candidate of “grievance politics,” all the evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.
It was, I believe, the C-SPAN coverage of a small rally at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, held not many months after you have declared your candidacy, that first drew my attention to you among the Democratic hopefuls. More than anything else, your striking confidence as a biracial candidate hailing from, shall I say, an unorthodox family background grabbed hold of my imagination. If memory serves, there was a moment when you started out, “As some of you may know, my father is from Kenya.” Then you heard someone’s happy response in the background: you smiled, turned around and said, “Oh, I see there are some from Kenya here!” (My apology if these were not exact words) At that moment, Mr. Senator, you looked so comfortable in your skin, so courageously un-afraid to be authentically yourself, that I could not help but think, “Wow, what difference would it make to have this person as President of the United States?”
I wrote about my hope that you should be the 44th President in a Korean-language message board I frequent, still more or less expecting the nomination to be clinched by Senator Clinton. The date of that posting was June 12, 2007.
Since then I have recalled having seen your photo in 1988 as a fresh-faced Harvard Law student, when Crimson reported your conciliatory efforts toward the African-American student body as the first African-American editor of Harvard Law Review, and later your profile in Harvard Magazine amidst a tough senatorial campaign in Illinois. I have returned to these sources and then dug up some more information about you: I have started to follow your Presidential campaign closely. The more I read about you, and listened to you in the last 16 months, the more impressed and excited I became.
So many factors—your superb performance as an orator and a persuader, your display of sound judgment, intellectual capacity and calm temperament, your distinguished if not-too-long records as a public servant, your policy proposals, the way you have commanded election campaigns without rancor and cynicism, nonetheless with a healthy measure of somber realism and unfailingly astute assessment of the strengths of your adversaries—have come together, almost spectacularly, to confirm my initial impression.
I have no reason to doubt that, if elected, you will not only make a powerfully effective President of the United States, but perform this role, now more important for the welfare of the entire human race than ever, in a sober, responsible manner, never prone to grandiose theatrics disguised as gestures of confidence (which often comes tinged with a hyper-masculine sense of jingoism in this country: “I will annihilate Iran,” remember?), carefully calibrating your choices against all possible opportunities and pitfalls, and shucking the type of ideological death-grips, seemingly inducing paralysis in the brains of even the most intelligent among America’s political representatives (By the way, I have read your and Senator McCain’s essays published in Foreign Affairs, and I think I recognize the forward-looking thrust of your world-view, as opposed to your rival’s rather old-fashioned, rigidly “us-vs.-them” notions of geopolitical strategy).
I strongly believe that the struggles that you had to go through as a child and young adult, and the insights on differences and similarities of human beings across cultural and ethnic divides you gained as a result, so eloquently and thoughtfully communicated in Dreams from My Father, is a great asset you will bring to your relationship with the rest of the world as President of the United States. It always frustrates me that so many Americans, “liberals” included, and even those whom I respect and admire, are essentially locked in the view that the United States is the center of the known universe, much as the Chinese empire used to regard itself as the “Central Kingdom.”
A rather noxious outgrowth of this tendency is the idea of America the global police, which in practical terms so easily devolves into America the global bully, the kind of corrupt police that gladly “works with” known criminals, runs its own illegal enterprises on the side, takes payola and faces the other way while their “friends” commit dastardly deeds, but does not hesitate to adopt the policy of shoot-to-kill when dealing with the criminals “they don’t like.” I am yet to see a global leadership emerging from Washington D. C. that truly practices “realism:” by which I don’t mean positioning oneself in the genealogy of Hans Morgenthau-Henry Kissinger school of international relations, but being fully cognizant of the complexly intertwined nature of international relations and being able to offer a coherent vision of a better, future world in which the United States can rightfully assume not just the dominant role but also the responsibility of a leading nation. More often, “realism” in foreign policy simply means exercising seemingly God-given right of the U. S. to pursue its (often ill-defined) “national interests” at the expense of other nations. Why don’t we all go back to the true meaning of “realism,” which is to face the empirical reality of the situation as it stands and start off from there, rather than using it as a codeword for taking a hard-line, unilateral, non-idealistic stance? (As in the often-used expression, “Get real.” Well, I am still hoping against hope that the U. S. would really “get real” about the world)
To be truthful, Senator Obama, I have some reasons to be concerned about you as well.
Yes, your professed willingness to “use diplomacy first” in relation to the so-called enemies of the United States—unlike the disastrous foreign policies of George W. Bush– as well as your consistent refusal to use the jingoistic rhetoric to gain easy approval from the voters are deeply encouraging. However, in your stump speeches, you have sometimes resorted to bringing up “unfair trade practices” of South Korea, and, at least on one occasion, took Koreans to the task for questioning the safety standards of American beef.
I understand that this is a familiar refrain derived from the Democratic Party election strategy manual. I am reminded of the presidential campaign of Senator Dick Gephardt circa 1988, whose protectionist campagin theme found an appropriate scapegoat in Hyundai cars. Senator Gephardt knew that he could not seriously challenge the consumers for buying Toyotas and Hondas in droves, so he picked on Hyundai, a Korean brand (Perhaps you would like to challenge this version of the story? I know your campaign does include veterans of the Gephardt campaign: I’d love to hear their takes on this episode).
It is not that I believe you have any animus against Koreans or East Asians (although a few around me are alarmed that you are slightly “tone-deaf” about the Asia-Pacific. On the other hand, I am well aware of the support Asian-Pacific Americans are giving you). The real objection is that these Democratic Party agendas are old ideas, unfit for a country in an urgent need of facing the starkly new global realities.
I am also concerned that, once in power, you, like other U. S. Presidents who came before you, will fail to include the extremely vocal and active Korean civil society— its middle class citizens, its students, its factory workers, its academics not working for the government, its NGOs, its community organizers—in the future discussions about the evolution of U. S- Korean relationship, and in your formation of long-term strategies involving one of the world’s most volatile and important regions. Why can’t the American President treat Korean citizens like adults and explain to them, openly and honestly, what common interests the two nations share, and whereupon their respective interests begin to diverge? Why can’t he give Koreans a simple reassurance that, no, I cannot put the interest of Koreans above those of the Americans, but no, I will not treat 35 million Koreans merely as potential “collateral damage?”
So, I, along with other like-minded specialists of Korea/East Asia, will be observing your foreign relations initiative in the Asian-Pacific regions closely, and if necessary, will raise my voice in protest and criticism. Still, I am hoping that you will be the first American President, to continue with the law-and-order analogy, to actually lower the crime rate in the global village, by throwing the copper’s badge away and seriously starting a community policing program.
Perhaps all this is too much to ask from an American President. I sometimes think Americans will do everything they can not to elect a President who actually are aware of the world outside their “backyards” — in Governor Sarah Palin’s ludicrous desgination, the “real America” (Does Governor Palin know the difference between North and South Korea? It’s not exactly like North and South Dakota, as you probably are aware, Mr. Senator, but I have my doubts about Madame Governor).
Nonetheless, I believe that if anyone can break out of this constricting mold for perceiving international relations—that apparently generate horrifyingly backward-looking ideas such as a “League of Democracies,” entertained by Senator John McCain—it is probably you, Senator Obama.
I believe the people who claim that we are projecting whatever we want to see to the “blank slate of Obama” is completely, utterly wrong. You are, to put it bluntly, as far removed from a blank slate as any American politician I have had a chance to observe. No doubt you already come prepared with substantive ideas about how to grapple with monumental problems that face the next President. I am not going to second-guess them. I simply request that you apply the same rigorous “new thinking” you have displayed in tackling domestic agendas to understanding of the U. S- Korean (and in broader terms, U. S- Asian) relations. They are in need of re-thinking and re-conception, as much as Ronald Reagan’s “trickle-down” theory of economics is in need of debunking.
Yet, despite these qualms, I would like to end my letter by thanking you. Yes, you are an ambitious politician, capable of being ruthless and manipulative, if the occasion calls for it, I suspect. But that is what we expect of someone who seriously wants to be the commander-in-chief of the American military. The unshakeable truth remains that no one else could have done what you have done so far.
It is from the bottom of my heart I thank you for the following:
For allowing us to imagine, and perhaps even participate in, the grand spectacle of a great nation once again setting itself to the course of realizing its almost unrealistically lofty ideals:
For putting us that much closer to seeing a Korean-American woman with a “funny name” like, say, Young Mi Kim, in the seat of U. S. Presidency, or a half-Vietnamese-half-Korean man with another “funny name” like Nguyen Park, occupying the Blue House (in Korea), in the not-too-distant future:
For giving me, a historian by profession, a chance of being part of the monumental history unfolding right before my eyes:
For inspiring the young, the future, the soon-to-come of the human race toward acton for the betterment of the world.
Finally, thank you, Senator Obama, for believing in yourself, for having conviction in your ideas and abilities, and running for Presidential election this year, rather than later, which made all of the above possible.
Next time I write to you on these pages, I hope to address you by a different title.
May God’s wisdom be with you always, and may He choose you as the one to carry the burden.
Kyu Hyun Kim
Associate Professor of Japanese and Korean History
University of California, Davis
