The Man Behind the Magical Words

WHIZ-KID. The 27-year-old Jon Favreau (right) is the person behind Obama's imposing speech -and he has proven to us that if you are truly eager to reach your career's pinnacle; your age doesn't really play a part in accomplishing that dream.

"If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy; tonight is your answer.

...it's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment; change has come to America."

(Barack Obama, acceptance speech, November 4 2008)

In this world, there are two types of profession. The first is the ones who work right underneath the highlight and savor recognition and popularity through his job –people like news announcer, actors, or sport athletes are within this category.

And there are people who work in background; the ones who actually play the role as important as the first type’s yet do not receive much recognition or popularity due to their behind-the-scene job.

As a president of the United States, Barack Obama can be considered very much the first type. Those moving speeches of his, like the lines that were written at the beginning, inspires many people not only Americans but also all the citizens of world.

But he wasn't really the one who made it –it’s the second-type person who actually wrote those imposing words to him.

Of all the shivering Americans who were awed by Barack Obama's inspirational speech, few realized that Jonathan Favreau, 27, was the man who played the most essential role behind the assembly of all those imposing words. Favreau, who was dubbed as the youngest-person speechwriter ever for US presidential inauguration few months ago, has achieved something that can be considered atypical for a person who is still on his relatively young age.

From college to White House, from jeans and polo-shirt to a formal suit with tie; now the merely 27-year old guy has an almost unlimited access to the oval office -Barack Obama’s prestigious workplace- as he is appointed as the director of speechwriting for the new president.

“Barack trusts him,” said David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s chief campaign strategist. “And Barack doesn’t trust too many folks with that — the notion of surrendering that much authority over his own words.”

"I call him Mozart because he's just this young creative genius." He added. (quoted from The New York Times)

True, this guy has humbly been working in the background and received less recognition than the one who enunciated his words, yet TIME Magazine still acknowledged him as his powerful words earned him a place in the magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2009.

And that’s a hell of achievement for a young person who, unlike his allies in the 100 list, spent his working time in Starbucks writing and researching with a coffee and a bottle of Red Bull as his companies (what a cool way to work indeed). You know, surely most of the person who are listed in TIME Magazine’s 100 list do not have time to hang out in the café like Starbucks.

But it wasn’t the café that matters; he went there as part of his job anyway –besides, the only peculiar thing about his habit of going to Starbucks is the place is considered an uncommon place to be your office. Talking about his work, it is said that when Obama’s campaign intensified he stayed late until 3am to finish his writing and woke up as early as 5am, and even worked 16 hours a day during that time.

The upshot was worth the sweat however; now the girls can only go crazy after him as this Adam Levine look-alike White House executive, still on his mid 20s, has been able to stamp his name in the US history as one of the youngest US President’s speechwriter directors ever.

Questioned why he's still single, the cool answer that Favreau uttered may break many young girls’ hearts, “The rigors of this campaign have prevented any sort of serious relationship.”(quoted from The New York Times)

Yes, Jon Favreau is an eager beaver; and the success that he titled should be an example to follow for every young man who aims high for his future. The lesson he taught us is straightforward, do more than just dream and put every bit of your expressions into action. Do not just dream and stand still –you have to make headway in your attempt to bring a successful career into reality.

Hillary the Humble

STILL A FRIEND OF MINE. Although she suffered a defeat during the Democrat’s primary, Hillary Clinton shows her humbleness by pledging a loyalty to her former foe Barack Obama and working as his Secretary of the State.

Many writings have been dedicated to Barack Obama –his ability to inspire, his historic victory, or what will be his forthcoming policy during his terms of presidency–, but few have been written to Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of the State, who was in Indonesia last week to improve the US relation to the world's most populous Muslim country.

Out of scraps of Obama’s highlight, Hillary is humbly working in the background, delineating patriotism in her own depiction. Her modesty was especially shown in an exclusive interview, where she was asked what post she was up to after Obama trounced her in her way of becoming the first woman president of the United States.

The answer that she uttered was really inspiring

“I am going to be focused on what we’re going to get done. I’m not interested in just enhancing my visibility. I’m interested in standing on the South Lawn of the White House and seeing President Obama signing into law quality, affordable health care for everybody, and voting in a big majority for clean, renewable energy and smarter economic policies. That’s what I’m all about, and I’m going to use every tool at my disposal to bring about.” (TIME magazine, November 17 2008)

Read again. I am going to be focused on what we’re going to get done. The meaning of her words is actually straightforward; what matters is actually focusing herself to accomplish the country’s objective – and for her it doesn’t matter what place of duty she is in.

And yes, she carries out her words. She does serve her nation, but neither as a president –as she was running at the first place during this year election–, nor as a vice-president –the role that most of the people think that Hillary will perfectly fit for–, but just as the country’s secretary of the state.

Imagine someone as gifted as Hillary Clinton, who possesses nearly all the capabilities needed to lead the world’s most powerful nation, unpretentiously accepted her new role, a supporting role. Something we hardly see in Indonesia, where every person wants to be a president and politicians are caught in the fuss among themselves about who should be the frontrunner and who should be the patron.

Furthermore, it is worth noting that accepting her new post as the secretary of the state means she has to work under Barack Obama, who is actually her ex rival during the nail-biting campaign for Democrat’s presidential nominee.

Here’s one example we can learn from US politicians. As we recall the competition between Obama and Hillary in the past, it is true that they indefatigably criticized each other throughout the Democrat’s primary.

But soon after Obama had been endorsed officially as the democrat’s presidential nominee frontrunner, they amalgamated with no animosities towards each other. Hillary supported Obama wholeheartedly, persuading her supporters to give their votes to her former foe and even lending him a hand during the campaign by frequently attending his campaign alongside her husband.

Well, such notion may look difficult for Indonesian leaders to comprehend, instead, they prefer to heave their fierce rivalry into sight by criticizing each other rather than working in cooperation, do they?

And yet there’s still another lesson we can learn from her. Take a look once more on Hillary’s words above and these words may cause Indonesian politicians to shiver: I am not interested in just enhancing my visibility.

Today, many Indonesian politicians’ motive of becoming president is just a personal fame or fulfillment of self-ambition. As she pointed out, recognition and fulfilling your self-ambition as the nation’s number one man should be the last things you have in mind when you stride yourself ahead as a presidential candidate; lifting your country and its citizens to prosperity must be placed as your main agenda.

An election is never about the president; it is about the people. If you get elected as a president, people won’t pay heed whether you win by a landslide or a petite. Your recognition, of course, will be based on how you administer your country and its people during your terms of presidency.

And the victory itself comes not when you finally succeed of winning the election and stamping a history of yourself by becoming the nation’s number one man; victory comes when you have completed the tasks that are assigned to you the time you get elected as the commander-in-chief.

Dealing with different countries means dealing with different responsibilities. For the new US president Barack Obama, it means fixing its economic framework and restoring the citizen of the world’s faith in America’s foreign policy. For the forthcoming president of Indonesia, it means eliminating Indonesia’s poverty and keeping pace with Asia’s economic tigers like China, Taiwan, India, Malaysia, and Singapore –a realistic target considering a wealth of natural resources and an established democracy that Indonesia has.

Hillary Clinton suffered defeat in the election, but surely she won’t be feeling too downhearted at the moment. It is neither a self-ambition’s accomplishment nor a reputation that she sought when she was running for the president of the United States; it is her ambition of fulfilling the country’s objective that she set in the first place.

We hope you had a good time while you were in Indonesia, Mrs. Secretary. As we prepare to usher our own presidential election this year, your humility from the previous US election should really be an inspiration for every politicians here in Indonesia.

The Lesson from Obama's Win

Yes, Barack Obama won the election. No, he has not elected as the president yet; and people are criticizing him already for not making any actions regarding the conflict in Gaza. Thus let’s momentary ignore Israel-Palestine war issue when we talk about Obama as today he is officially inaugurated as the 44^th president of the United States. As a matter of fact, the Israel-Palestine war has eclipsed what actually we can learn from his triumph and what it really means to all the people in the world.

Today, as we say goodbye to the out-of-favor president George W. Bush, Americans and the world welcome an unlikely new president who is supposed to be the one to fix the battered image of the country abroad and change United States to a nation that the world can depend once more.

Obama’s win is an unlikely case; simply because he is black. As it happens in most of the countries in the world, the minority usually hasn’t got the same opportunity as the majority has. Now we can see that the world’s most powerful nation is led by a black man, and that’s really something.

Change we can believe in, says Barack Obama, the man who successfully convinces Americans to believe that he, regardless the color of his skin, can make change for country’s future image to the world. The man who teaches us that being minority doesn’t mean you can’t fulfill your dream; even his once impossible reverie to be a black president in his country can come into reality. And this is the man who, most importantly, unites the Americans and razes racial barriers which have overwhelmed the people for years.

“No he will not make it because, you know, he is a black. And racial discrimination in that country is way bigger than you think”, said my Indonesian colleague friend from United States when he came back to Jakarta a year ago. Obama was still trailing behind Hillary Clinton in the race for Democrat’s presidential nominee back then, and skepticism still arose whether Americans were ready yet to have an African-American to be their president.

But the United States people have proved themselves that they can brush skin color judgment aside and unite for the country’s purpose. Obama’s win as the first black president of the United States shows that now each citizen in that country, black or white, minority or majority, can share the same opportunity and freedom; the mere delusion that was dreamed by Martin Luther King 45 years ago.

And bear in mind that it happens in United States –where there was time when black students were not allowed to be in the same class with white students, when black people are obliged to sit at the back of the bus, and when a black politician is condemned for having dinner in the White House.

Today, many countries are still struggling to surmount their own underlying racial and ethnic problems. And the one who suffers is always the minority, who has yet to experience commonly unfair treatments and conducts and can not share the equal opportunity as the majority has.

As an Indonesian, it is true that I am not considered as minority. Yet speaking about being part of the minority, I am an obedient Muslim who spent 6 years in Catholic school that is dominated by the Chinese, the race that hold only less than 4 percent of Indonesia’s total population and for long has been struggling to find their way out of frequent unfair treatments from the bureaucracy or other Indonesians. Trust me, I do know what it feels like to be a minority.

Think the way Americans were thinking when they cast their vote in the election. It’s not Obama’s race that matters; it’s his ability to bring the country back on the right pathway. As the new president-elect officially stepped in to the oval office this January, the Americans have shown us that the earth we are currently living is no longer a place where people are judged by the color of their skin, or other differences that matter.

If American people can do it, then why can’t we? Oh obviously, yes we can.