Last week Anthony Barnett, the British social entrepreneur and political comentarist, recently authored an article on the webzine he founded, Open Democracy.net, exploring Senator Barak Obama's campaign.
If you are not familiar with OpenDemocracy, I highly reccomend browsing through its pages. It is a London-based webzine/opinion forum that offers “stimulating, critical analysis, promoting dialogue and debate on issues of global importance and linking citizens from around the world.” Some of the leading Euoprean thinkers publish their opinion here.
In “Taking Obama Seriously” Barnett does, in fact, take the US Senator very seriously. The 7,000-word essay explores just about every aspect of his campaign from its inception to the present, document throughout with links to other expert commentaries.
The article offers a window into how the US presidential primary is seen through a “free-thinking” British academic's eyes. It is not surprsing that Obama's vote against the war in Iraq in 2003 wins him a large amount of respect from Barnett, as much of the British intellectual community was also against the war.
Open Democracy.net also hosts a few other articles about the US Presidential candidates. This article, writen by a black American living in France, uses a discussion about Obama's race as an entry into a critique about race relations in France. Here is an interesting interpretation of the US primaries through the eyes of Godfrey Hodgson, a British-born America-phile.
