The year is 1964. The setting is the Cabinet Room of the White House.

An unexpected accident and the law of succession has just made Douglass Dilman the first black President of the United States.
This is the theme of what was surely one of the most provocative novels of the 1960s. It takes the reader into the storm centre of the presidency, where Dilman, until now an almost unknown senator, must bear the weight of three burdens: his office, his race, and his private life.
From beginning to end, ‘The Man’ is a novel of swift and tremendous drama, as President Dilman attempts to uphold his oath in the face of international crises, domestic dissension, violence, scandal, and ferocious hostility.
Push comes to shove in a breathtaking climax, played out in the full glare of publicity, when the Senate of the United States meets for the first time in one hundred years to impeach the President.
Anyone who read the book or even those who did not would have treated the idea of a Black American President as a far-fetched dream. But author of ‘The Man’, Irving Wallace, proved to be prophetic because five decades after, America had its first Black President in Barack Obama and very importantly, he was re-elected for a second term.
President Obama was chosen as the Time 2008 Person of the Year following his historic election and once again he has received that same honour in recognition of his re-election this year.
“We are in the midst of historic cultural and demographic changes,” Time managing editor Richard Stengel said in announcing its choice. “And Obama is both the symbol and in some ways the architect of this new America.”
The president’s re-election in November showed “the Obama effect was not ephemeral anymore, no longer reducible to what had once been mocked as that ‘hopey-changey stuff,’ Time’s Michael Scherer wrote in the accompanying cover story.
“It could be measured in wars stopped and started; industries saved, restructured or re-regulated; tax cuts extended; debt levels inflated; terrorists killed; the health-insurance system re-imagined; and gay service members who could walk in uniform with their partners. It could be seen in the new faces who waited hours to vote and in the new ways campaigns are run. America debated and decided this year: history would not record Obama’s presidency as a fluke.”
But at an annual luncheon to discuss its Person of the Year issue last month, Stengel said he wasn’t a luck this time around.
“It’s an interesting year because we have a re-elected president,” Stengel said. “Sometimes we pick them, sometimes we don’t.”
At the event, Newt Gingrich–Time’s Man of the Year in 1995–said “the American voter” would be his choice, but wouldn’t bet against Obama. “I have twice underestimated him by a large margin,” the former House Speaker said, adding: “If they pick Obama, it would be perfectly fair to have a tiny elephant crying somewhere in the corner.”
However, the election and re-election of President Obama does not only have significance to White dominated America but to our country, Guyana, as well because race and politics is a dominant issue.
Obama’s ascension to the White House in a society with an overwhelming White majority, which holds the bulk of economic and financial power, puts to rest the theory that someone or a political party from a minority group cannot rise to political power.
This is a theory being peddled by some people within our society and using it to push for what they refer to as shared power or governance. Significantly, when these people or their party was in government through rigged elections they never talked about shared power or governance.
In fact, when the late Dr Cheddi Jagan had put forward the idea of a National Front Government as a way to build national unity and move the country forward he was scoffed at.
However, many who accuse Indo-Guyanese of raced-based voting conveniently forget or are suffering from amnesia, that this ethnic group welcomed the slain Dr. Walter Rodney with opened arms. In fact, the records will show that while his public meetings attracted Guyanese from all ethnic groups, Indo-Guyanese were in the majority and if Dr Rodney had ever become a presidential candidate at a free and fair elections they were prepared to support him.
So the idea being peddled that Indo-Guyanese vote only on race and because of their numbers no Afro-Guyanese will ever have a chance of ascending to the presidency, is pure ‘bunkum’.
President Donald Ramotar is another case in point. He rose to the position of General Secretary of the PPP and President of Guyana but he is not of Indian ethnicity. His father is of Indian extraction and his mother is of mixed Black and Amerindian ethnicities.
The issue, therefore, is not about a particular ethnic group voting based on race but putting up a credible candidate who commands respect and confidence from all sections of the society.
The Obama lesson clearly tells us that.