Simon Schama reaches back to the past to confirm a bet on America
Do not expect understatement in Simon Schama’s inquiry into America’s problems that Barack Obama inherited in what most agree has to be a transformative presidency. Not when he opens his Prologue (‘Iowa Waltz’) with these lines: “I can tell you exactly, give or take a minute or two, when American democracy came back from the dead because I was there: 7:15 p.m. Central Time, 3 January 2008, Precinct 53.” Exactly when because: “I was regularly checking my watch.” It was not just that Obama was now visibly on course to challenge not just the Democratic favourite but also the despairing sense of disquiet in his country that events had not been true to its narrative.

A measure of this disquiet is provided by Schama’s observation about the final verdict in November: “Conceding, John McCain looked happy for the first time since he accepted the Republican nomination and went out of his way to garland the victor with heartfelt appreciation, as if he had been secretly wanting to do that for some time. Even the incumbent, whose presidency was being repudiated, understood that America had suddenly become better for what had happened and had the decency, in so many words, to say so.”

The story of the redemptive content of the Obama bid and victory has been told many times, and most often very well. Schama is not just among the liveliest of them, he is also incredibly inventive and insightful.
As is the custom with British historians teaching in American universities, The American Future is based on a television programme Schama did. (Curiously, the book is only just out in its American edition.) Schama reaches into the past to find telling historical detail and biographies that illustrate the best of America’s striving for a different future. If this kind of telling appears to be a liberal statement of American exceptionalism, so be it. Because it a robust telling of the debates that underpinned an actualisation of that exceptionalism.

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