Vic Socotra

09 August 2008

Time

I have known, as you have, that there is a new force in the world, but I knew it intellectually, and from statistics. Not from the gut. I do now.

It had something to do with the nature of time. Halfway around the world, the games were actually in progress in the Asian sunlight as we were shown the events of the Chinese evening.

Last night's broadcast in prime time of the opening ceremonies did precisely what the Chinese wanted. They are not a rising power any more. They have arrived.

I noted with some amusement the world leaders sitting and watching. The Most Powerful Man in the World, the American President, was one of them, held hostage to the ceremony. Despite his power, there was no escape from the inexorable march of China. He had to sit in his chair along with the Presidents and Prime Ministers in his seat.

There were no Marine guards around him, nor a red carpet on which he could sweep out of the Bird’s Nest stadium on his own schedule. He was a captive to the Olympic agenda, and any motion toward the Communications van, or the Nuclear Football would simply not due. This is a bit of a foreshadowing for him, toward the day next year when he will become an ordinary citizen once more.

In this place, though, waiting through the remarkable display of seventeen thousand dancers and martial arts experts, through the fireworks, and then the interminable march of the Olympic nations, he had to sit and take it, thesenior representative of the United States of America.

He watched along with us, unable to influence the inexorable unfolding of the ceremony. It was not a display of bombast, or chest-thumping nationalism. It did convey a sense of strength and resurgence. High-technology applications applied to the sweep of five thousand years of history.

When the parade of athletes began, the nations were not presented in alphabetical order as they are titled in the Roman scheme of language . They were presented in the order that their names are constructed in the strokes of the Chinese characters. The United States was placed about two-thirds of the way through the parade.

It is something that everyone is going to have to deal with from here out. The Chinese do things their way. Polite, if possible, but their way nonetheless.

NBC graciously provided periodic views of the American president. He was seated like an ordinary spectator next to his wife. Laura Bush looked gracious and engaged, something she has done nicely over that last eight years. The President has his challenges in that, which leads me to suspect that he is afflicted by a touch of Attention Deficit Disorder.

The President’s body language clearly showed his desire to be elsewhere. In the long shot, cut between the swirling of thousands of choreographed dancers in computer-controlled sparking suits, they caught him doing something we have learned not to do in public situations.

He should remember not to do that. His Dad famously got nailed doing the same thing near the end of a debate against the young man who would take his job away. He forgot that you have to be in the moment, or at least pretend to be, or your credibility is shot. The world will move on without you.

In the long shot over the mass of moving bodies, bless his heart, the American President was looking not so furtively at his watch.

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