President "Ishmael"

Barack Obama's nomination as the official candidate of the Democratic Party offers many firsts, not least that he is the first African American to come so close to the Oval Office. Yet more importantly perhaps, Obama is the first presidential candidate to so baldly represent the histories of migration and movement that have made America. With immediate connections to Kenya, Malaysia, Hawaii and the rural midwest, Obama embodies the global narratives that course through American identity.

Such a multitude of connections may be to Obama's detriment. As Michael Powell observes in this excellent, sweeping piece in the NY Times "newcomers always rubbed up against the settled." Just as "primal rootlessness" and "wanderlust" are encoded in American DNA, so too are the myths of the small town, of Main Street and safe white fences staples of American political parlance. Thanks to his roaming upbringing, Obama remains susceptible to right-wing attacks aimed at his supposed "Americanness". But McCain - and a slew of past presidents - has no less "rooted" a past as the scion of a military family. As one scholar tells Powell, "The next US president is going to be Ishmael [the Biblical wanderer], whether we like it or not, and whether he knows it or not."