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# The Obama effect
- URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/the-obama-effect/
- Published: 2008-11-06T09:11:54.000Z
- Updated: 2019-02-14T22:42:11.000Z
- Author: Anthony Barnett
- Tags: #en, #Migrated, #Import 2026-04-09 18:49

**Anthony Barnett (London,** [**OK**](https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/)**):** In a brief post [in the Times ](http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest%5Fcontributors/article5092929.ece?ref=opendemocracy.net)David Lammy MP, the Minister for Skills, who met Obama some years back at Harvard writes about the impact of his election. He says,

*In the end politics is not the art of the possible: far from it. It is the art of making things possible.*

There is a very important issue here with New Labour. Indeed, Lammy was the first member of the government to engage with the argument about the [political class](https://www.opendemocracy.net/blog/ourkingdom-theme/anthony-barnett/2008/05/23/the-political-class-not-the-upper-class-is-the-problem) (we reproduced it in OK) and has a broader understanding of this than [Hazel Blears](http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/nov/05/votera-pathy-hazel-blears-blogging?ref=opendemocracy.net). But traditional, Clinton-loving, triangulating New Labour had a very different 'practical' approach. He reports,

*I came back from America and told people that I believed the first black president was already waiting to step forward. They thought I was mad.*

Who could those 'they' be, I wonder!