EDITORIAL: Welcome Yesterday's Man Bush, But Found

One thing Mr. George Bush will get from this side of the Atlantic is a hearty welcome. It is in our nature. Ghanaians are a notoriously pleasant people, especially to foreigners. We find it extremely difficult to blame foreigners, unless he is a football coach. We try to search ourselves first, before heaping blame on the visitor.

If Pamela Bridgewater, the US ambassador inspite of her especial closeness to our President will be honest, she will at least confirm this, plus our grudging appreciation of $540 million dollars that the Millennium Challenge Account that is coming our way by virtue of Bush's compassionate policy towards Africa, which has seen aid treble to $8.7 billion if congress approves of it.

The time delay mechanism attached to the MCA funds, with the fact that it is spread over five long years and loaded with American consultants overseeing every strand of the long cumbersome process, is taking the shine off the gesture.

Bush will find that Ghana has her fair share of political Loony Lefts who debase everything in shrill voices, and exaggerate every issue rather cynically, tagging the Bush visit as an initiative to grab oil. But the vast majority of Ghanaians appreciate the falsehood being bandied by Mr. Pratt's five man member Social Forum.

So is the riddle of Ghana being a base for the US's foreign policy of establishing a base here for the rapid deployment which is shrouded in official secrecy, even if it is positive.

REPUBLICAN LAST LEG

But there are important lessons to learn, either way. For us in Ghana, it is interesting that Bush is coming to Ghana at a time that his party which happens to have a relation with our ruling party, is on its last leg.

Not that we as Ghanaians put any store of value to that relationship, but what is important to us is entering the home stretch of his administration, according to the Hudson Institute, a Washington -based research group, and this trip is nothing short of good bye visit which will not result in any fruitful dividend to our national interest.

He is coming to see what he has done, rather than what he should be doing. In plain words, Bush is coming to do nothing. The Chronicle counsels our leaders to leave out the shopping list that they are wont to read out.

OBAMALOOPA Yesterday, the New York times reporting on Bush's visit to Tanzania, reported that Presidential contender Senator Obama is the number one topic that dominated the American President's visit.

Here in Ghana, we unashamedly concede that behind the niceties of an elaborate three day visit which has witnessed a surfeit of C130 Hercules planes in our airspace, the nation has an infatuation with developments in America.

Even though George Bush remains the veritable all powerful President, we realise also that his party for now is in the sunset of its hold on the reins of power, and realistically we have to align with the party that is going to produce the next President of US, because big George himself agrees with us, we have no track with losers. In a unipolar world, with those of us in this slice of the world, our fortunes must certainly be tied with a nation that will help us pull our boot straps.

OBAMA AND HILARY

For the Ghanaian national interest, the focus is who the victor of the Democratic Party will be. And Bush himself will understand why millions of nationalistic Ghanaians will be rooting for President Barrack Obama and not Senator McCain.

Bush's arrival today in continuation of his tour of the 'dark continent' is to highlight his commitment to the impoverished continent and burnish his foreign-policy legacy.

In Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana and Liberia, he touted his initiatives to encourage democracy and combat poverty, disease and corruption. Missing from the itinerary were nations where Bush and the U.S. haven't been able to have as much of a positive impact.

His administration has called the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region "genocide." Opposition parties and outside observers have condemned as unfair elections in Kenya and our own Kofi Annan is playing a mediating role there. Bush bypassing Kenya has said that Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice will go to Kenya to urge peace.

So really there will be a lot of back slapping and appreciation for the billions of dollars in aids and malaria control money that have been sunk across the continent. Ghana is particularly grateful to American private citizens, Mr. Bill Gates and Mr. Ted Turner for their assistance in the area of health and Agriculture too.

For us in Ghana, we must face up to the reality that America affects us in a way that China is now affecting us in almost every important sector.

YESTERDAY'S MAN

Bush, as we have noted, is yesterday's man, so the focus should be on the exciting political developments that is raging in that country, as we ourselves go through the same political process of choosing our next leader.

In the US, the excitement in the race to the Whitehouse has brought back Americans to the polling booths in a way that has never happened since the days of the Kennedys.

For America, issues about women in political leadership has generated such intense interest because of Mrs Hillary Clinton's resonance in Ghana, where women President and Vice Presidents is all the rave.

LESSONS

Ghanaians also find the prospect of a Kenyan and a black man in the Oval office so exciting that we are willing for him to win. Obama is the most inspiring American politician for a generation and he represents leadership of change, change from the gridlock politics that is the forte of Republicans.While Hillary is dead serious and confidently and inspiration -free. Clintonites regard Obama as a talented wind-bag, Obamaites regard Hilary as a divisive bore.

What distinguished McCain' people from Obama's throng was not just its age but its demographic monotony: all white and nearly all male. Such has been the inescapable Republican brand throughout this campaign, ever since David Letterman memorably pegged its lineup of presidential contenders last spring as "guys waiting to tee off at a restricted country club."

For Mr. McCain, who along with Hilary Clinton had the ghost of an endorsement for the war in Iraq dogging every which way they turn, the knives of gung-ho may have caught up with them.

When Mr. McCain jokingly invoked the Obama slogan "I am fired up and ready to go" in his speech Tuesday night, it was as cringe-inducing as the white covers of R & B songs in the 1950s.

Frank Rich a columnist on the New York Times put it so sweetly dramatic: .

Trapped in an archaic black-and-white newsreel, the G.O.P. looks more like a nostalgic relic than a national political party in contemporary America. A cultural sea change has passed it by, and yesterday's endorsement of McCain by Mr. Bush will not change the forward march of history, and change..

The 2008 primary campaign has been so fast and furious that we haven't paused to register just how spectacular that change is. All the fretful debate about whether voters would turn out for a candidate who is a black or a woman seems a century ago.

A similar quest is going on in Ghana.

Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama demolished the Democratic field, including a Presidential-looking Southern white man with an enthusiastic following, John Edwards. What was only months ago an exotic political experiment is now almost ho-hum.

Given America past race struggles, the Obama triumph has been the bigger surprise to many. For Obama to take a 52 percent victory in white Virginia is comparable to the second coming of Christ! The Old Dominion continues to astonish those who remember it. And Ghana, a nation riven with ethnic flashes, cannot be more impressed and excited with developments in America, and draw important lessons on race (they call it tribalism), gender and unity in diversity. God Bless America the beautiful, and its Bible punching President Bush.