Three months before he was born, his father died in a traffic accident. A setback of a magnitude hard to grasp on our latitudes where the social safety net is supposed to catch everyone and ensure that we all get the same opportunities in life. This is not how the American system works. The fierce American capitalism selects its winners and leaves many behind in ghettos and slums. Small fry slip through the meshes. Any man of meager means who gets his hands on the White House steering wheel is no average Joe. In addition to a good head on his shoulders, he has to wield a will of steel, be cunning and along with visions and ideals he must have the unshakable faith that all obstacles can be overcome.
Clinton was born a year after the war ended and has not served in Vietnam. In ‘68 he was 22, by then the youth had declared war on conservative systems and authoritarian political fossils. He moved to Oxford, then Yale. This paints him as a rather atypical young man with ambitions in a country where a military career often is a gateway into the halls of political power. He was determined to rule what is the only empire of our days and yet he has smoked pot, is an excellent sax player and a sort of right-wing socialist, who already then had decided he was going to change his home country and the world.
This guy, who was inspired by Kennedy, pulled all the world’s strings 8 years running. He cleaned up Reagan’s economic mess, redefined America’s role, after the red czars of Kremlin had thrown in their towels, and he transformed the defense organization NATO into an offensive system when the carpet bombings of the Balkans began.
This political mogul will be landing at Vágar airport in just a few hours. What does he want and what good does a visit by a retired president do us?
Of course we are all very excited to hear what a man, who has had the ultimate responsibility for the world’s most important and most difficult decisions, has to say to the people of the Faroe Islands. He will be paid a few dollars for it, well then, but considering his laden wallet that petty change is probably not why he is visiting. He has a story to tell. And a man who has been sparring with Al Gore for eight years should be able to convey a message to us about what the future holds in store for mankind.
This Danish dependency at 62 degrees in the North Atlantic will probably be getting more than it gives. Even though we lag politically behind those nations, which have assumed responsibility for themselves, Clinton’s visit proves that mentally we are taking giant strides out into the international maelstrom, which spins ever faster. If we handle this correctly, it should boost our brand in global society unlike ever before. The organization of this visit is a great credit to the House of Industry. I recently read the book about Bobby Fischer, the American chess player who defeated the Soviet chess machine in Reykjavík way back when. This was the first time Icelanders tried their hands at preparing an event that would draw the merciless and powerful light of the whole world’s projectors to the combatants in the Laugardals hall, Fischer and Spassky, as well as to the rest of the Icelandic society.
This battle of wits turned out to be quite a headache for Iceland. The controversial and egocentric American of course made matters worse, but our Icelandic brothers were not ready, not prepared, to be placed under the world’s microscope as the organizers of an international event. The fishery and peasant society had been sufficient onto itself. Observers have later said that this very game of chess mentally lifted Iceland up into a global sphere. Later there was the summit between Reagan and Gorbatjov and today the Icelanders feel right at home in all the world’s marble halls.
Perhaps the capital of a colony is not as interesting as the capital of a republic. But speaking of the chess effect, a world champion was in our midst just a few years back, Gary Kasparov. He could not single-handedly set the world ablaze, however, he did have an enormous impact on the development of the Faroese youth. Today we are facing a new challenge and we should seize this opportunity, now that the whole world’s projectors will be focusing on this little mountainous country, which is barely even visible on the globe and completely unknown to virtually all Americans. Faroese tourism and industry on a whole should benefit greatly from this. It will be much easier to establish relations with the world, which to a great extent is bound together by communication, after this visit by the former US president. Clinton is likely to be relaxing in Kennedy’s rocking chair in about a year. This time, though, as the spouse of the political frontrunner Hillary Clinton, who will probably become the republic’s first ever female president.
I have been told, that one day when my grandfather and another skipper from the countryside met in one of Tórshavn’s narrow alleys, one of them uttered: “It is not small men one meets in the streets of Tórshavn nowadays”. This is the case with Clinton. He proved during his term that, even if you grew up during the age of flower power and might have given in to the times once or twice, smoked a joint and perhaps participated in a protest march, you are capable of governing a world power responsibly. Furthermore, nobody doubts the fact that he was one of the rather capable ones in that office.
Bush senior once said that the reason for his defeat in 1990 was the misfortune of being sandwiched between two of the finest orators of our time: Reagan and Clinton. Moreover, the man who has finally chosen to come to the Faroes must be equipped with an innate stubbornness, which makes him impossible to defeat. When he had wandered astray and the Lewinsky case was in full gear the whole world expected him to tumble. If we just think of the forces at his throat capital, politics and religion, it speaks volumes of the man that he pulled through. Mind you, there were those rooting for him on that occasion. El Jefe Commandante - Fidel Castro – issued a press release in the party paper Granma, announcing to the world that to get a little something on the side was just a basic human right. The famous Columbian Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Márquez, who grew up in the Latin-American macho culture, where custom allow every man his share, noted that Clinton should simply have done what Jonah did when he had been astray. Tell Hillary that he had been relaxing in the stomach of a great whale for a few days.
The superstar is on his way. Receive him well. According to the tide table all the Planet’s conditions are equilibrated in time. Perhaps a Faroese president will be visiting the White House in just a few years, when the republic has been founded, and then this visit will probably be considered one of the main stepping stones over the river, which awaits our conquest in leaps or perhaps a single bound.
Mr Tórbjørn Jacobsen is an MP for the Republican Party, a left orientated
party, which has the creation of the Faroes an independent state, on its
agenda.
Týðing: Marita Thomsen/SPROTIN
