The first I heard of Barack Obama was in 2006. Surfing Amazon.com one night, I came across a book on politics entitled, The Audacity of Hope, by a writer whose name I did not recognize. Since I had published a book, nine years earlier, called The Politics of Hope, I sensed a kindred spirit. I ordered the book, read it, and recognized the emergence of a new and powerful voice in American politics. When I heard that he was a presidential candidate, I knew he would win if the American electorate sensed it needed a fresh start, a new birth of freedom.
America does this more than any other nation on earth. It does so because its political culture is rooted in the concept of covenant. It has-again, more profoundly than any other Western power-a national narrative, rehearsed in every presidential inaugural since Washington's first in 1789. That narrative reads like an ongoing commentary to the biblical books of Shemot and Devarim. It means that Americans can be periodically recalled, not to some mythical past or golden age, but to their founding vision, their covenant with the future. In general, but especially in America, honor goes to the politician who can best speak to the anxieties of the age and out of them weave a compelling narrative of hope. That is what Obama did, and why he won.
The United States needs renewal now. In the course of the next twenty years its supremacy as the world's sole superpower will increasingly be challenged, not least by four ancient civilizations, each of which was once an empire: Russia, China, India, and the nations of Islam. America no longer appears to the world economically, politically, or militarily invulnerable. That is a major factor in our current global instability.
My concern is not with the immediate tasks facing the president: stabilizing the financial system, regenerating the economy, closing Guantánamo, and signaling American commitment to international programs on global warming and the Millennium Development Goals. Nor is my concern with recovering a multilateral approach to rogue, failed, and failing states. The United States needs a project, an equivalent in our time to the task of a moon landing by which JFK energized and captured the imagination of a generation.
There can be little doubt what that project must be: find an alternative to oil. It is American (and global) dependence on oil that has shaped the geopolitical environment, placing power and wealth in the hands of states, some of whom could be accused of using it to spread religious extremism and political militancy, pursue nuclear weapons, and threaten genocide. The search for new, effective, and environmentally safe sources of power has the potential to re-energize the American economy, focus new technology, protect the earth's ecology, and shift the global balance of power. The greatest statement of American values was the Declaration of Independence. Currently America is dependent. Its habits of consumption have made it so.
In my book on national identities, The Home We Build Together, I point out that Moses was able to forge a new nation from a group of escaping slaves by getting them to build something collectively. In that case it was a Sanctuary. But when it comes to nation-building generally, process matters more than product. A shared task does more to renew a people than any fiscal policy, legislative program, or political rhetoric. Barack Obama has found the words to summon a nation to greatness. Now he must find the work.
Sir Jonathan Sacks is Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth.
