We were reminded this weekend of Barack Obama’s response to John McCain’s campaign stunt to suspend the presidential campaign in September 2008 in order to focus on the failing economy. Obama responded that a president is called upon to face more than one crisis at a time and that he would continue to campaign as he contributed to the Senate’s efforts to bolster the economy. It was one of many times during the campaign that the much younger, more agile senator looked much more presidential than his Republican rival.
Many of President Obama’s relentless critics wondered aloud why he was following through with a scheduled visit to Brazil and other Latin American countries as Japan contends with a massive natural disaster and nuclear crisis of yet unknown scale, and Libya is in turmoil. As Obama knew on the campaign trail, a president must face more than one crisis at a time; and indeed, he called for airstrikes against Libya while on this trade and diplomatic mission to Brazil.
We found particularly ignorant and offensive the insinuation that the president’s visit to Brazil, which goes far beyond the symbolic and could pay lasting dividends, was intended as an idle frolic in the sun. Brazil has grown during the current economic downturn and replaced Italy as the world’s 7th largest national economy. It holds some $160 billion in U.S. bonds and is an important creditor nation. Brazil claims the world’s 10th largest oil reserves, nearly a fifth of its fresh water and a large amount of its inestimably valuable biodiversity in the Amazon. As Obama noted in an op-ed, “With around 200 million people, a growing middle class, and a per-capita income rising by almost 7 percent a year, Brazil imports more goods and services from the United States than from any other nation.” A billion dollars in American exports to Brazil creates 500 jobs in the U.S. As Robert Koenig reported in The Beacon, St. Louis could grow jobs at Boeing as a result of this visit, given that Brazil remains a potential major client for Boeing’s F/A-18 program, which employs about 5,000 people here.
Brazil also has done something America has never done, though Barack Obama did as much as anyone to prevent the realization of this particular milestone: it has elected its first woman head of state in President Dilma Rousseff.
Black America in particular should watch Brazil with interest, and not only during its world-famous Carnivale season. The president and his family were greeted enthusiastically in Brazil, where half of the population is considered black. Brazil and the United States have the largest populations of people with African blood outside of Africa. As Brazil experts Julia Sweig and Matias Spektor pointed out in the New York Times, some 30 million people have been lifted out of poverty in Brazil in the last decade – a large number of them African-Brazilians. As an emerging superpower with a richly diverse population and a vast amount of untapped potential, Brazil has much to teach American and African America in particular. “The United States could not be happier with the potential for a new, stable source of energy,” Obama said, regarding access to Brazil’s oil reserves. We believe that Brazil is a growing powerhouse and that our nation has just as much to learn, and just as much energy to gain, from another form of Brazilian black gold: its people.
