There are times when I am embarrassed by how much affection I have for an Irish rock star who looks more and more like Robin Williams.
But then he goes and explains -- and so succinctly -- exactly why much of the rest of the world sees President Obama in an entirely different light than America's irate conservatives and disillusioned liberals do.
I'm talking about Bono, of course, and his latest editorial missive in the New York Times. It's titled, "Rebranding America," and it makes a lot of sense (if you can stop being irate or disillusioned).
Bono concentrates on 36 words President Obama uttered at the United Nations last month. “We will," Obama said, "support the Millennium Development Goals, and approach next year’s summit with a global plan to make them a reality. And we will set our sights on the eradication of extreme poverty in our time.”
Many have spoken about the need for a rebranding of America. Rebrand, restart, reboot. In my view these 36 words, alongside the administration’s approach to fighting nuclear proliferation and climate change, improving relations in the Middle East and, by the way, creating jobs and providing health care at home, are rebranding in action.
These new steps — and those 36 words — remind the world that America is not just a country but an idea, a great idea about opportunity for all and responsibility to your fellow man.
All right ... I don’t speak for the rest of the world. Sometimes I think I do — but as my bandmates will quickly (and loudly) point out, I don’t even speak for one small group of four musicians. But I will venture to say that in the farthest corners of the globe, the president’s words are more than a pop song people want to hear on the radio. They are lifelines.
In dangerous, clangorous times, the idea of America rings like a bell (see King, M. L., Jr., and Dylan, Bob). It hits a high note and sustains it without wearing on your nerves. (If only we all could.) This was the melody line of the Marshall Plan and it’s resonating again. Why? Because the world sees that America might just hold the keys to solving the three greatest threats we face on this planet: extreme poverty, extreme ideology and extreme climate change. The world senses that America, with renewed global support, might be better placed to defeat this axis of extremism with a new model of foreign policy.
Bono goes on to talk about two equations that have the potential to reshape our world.
The first is a negative. It is a simple matter of arithmetic: poverty + ideology + climate.
The second is more affirmative. It also focuses on sums. The sum of security + development = stability.
The rest of Bono's NYTimes piece explains why those equations matter, and why many have their fingers crossed that Obama can work the numbers:
But the idea of America, from the very start, was supposed to be contagious enough to sweep up and enthrall the world.
And it is. The world wants to believe in America again because the world needs to believe in America again. We need your ideas — your idea — at a time when the rest of the world is running out of them.
