Obamarama

I ran up to Taipei yesterday to attend the Obama fundraiser at El Gallo in Tienmu. But before I say anything about that, I would like to say this:

VOTE!!!!!!

Deadlines for registration from abroad are fast approaching. Tell all your American friends, whether Democrat or Republican, that applications are available from Vote From Abroad (www.fvap.gov), the US government site. Be especially sure to notify the tens of thousands of dual citizenship holders -- they too can vote. Don't think you can't vote from overseas: if you are American and you have a pulse, then you can vote. Doesn't matter how long you have been away from the US or where you are from. You can't change the world by grousing in expat bars.....

Before the fundraiser began at 7 I had the opportunity to meet with Terri "I'm not the author" MacMillan at 5, at Wendell's German bakery in Tienmu. Terri is the current field director for the Obama campaign in North Asia (China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong), friendly, hardworking, and outgoing. Terri kept confusing us, claiming to be fifteen years older than she actually appeared to be. No one believed her.

At one point she solicited information about how people regarded Obama. There was a moment of discussion among the several expats gathered around the table (I was delighted to find another member of the Cleveland Diaspora there) and I summed it up by saying that the fear was that the Obama camp would sell Taiwan to China to get good relations with China, to which there was general agreement. Hold that thought.....

...I got to the fundraiser early and watched over the next half-hour as it filled with Americans, almost entirely from Tienmu. I can't think of the last time I had been around so many strapping, well-fed Americans. I couldn't have felt more pudgy and out of place than if I had been dropped buck-naked into a Zulu raiding party running to attack a kraal thirty kilometers away. Culture-shocked, I went off to skulk in a corner with a trio of us up from The Real Taiwan, or Taichung, as it is known to locals.

I got in line to get food -- quite strange it was, Tex-Mex food with actual nacho chips. Yes, not Doritos with mozzarella cheese spread squeezed on them and microwaved for 2 minutes on high. My body didn't know what to do with foreign food of such excellent quality: should it digest it, or preserve it for posterity? Coming back a few minutes later, I discovered that two attractive young Taiwanese women had taken my seat at the table. I've been here so long that my first thought was not WHOA! BABE ALERT! but "Whew. Taiwanese people. Thank god. Now I feel at home...."

It turned out that one of the women was a journalist for the Taipei Times sent to get some information on Obama supporters and how they saw things, a person I had interacted with on the net and long wanted to meet, while the other was an absolutely stunning reporter for the Central News Agency (CNA) there on the same mission. Eventually we fell to chatting, and she asked me what would happen if Obama won, and I said that it would probably mean that Taiwan was doomed, at which she made a face and said, yes, everyone is saying that......

......Obama folks: there's a widespread perception among people out here that if the Dems win it will mean that Taiwan is screwed. That perception is not helped by the recent pieces that have come out of the campaign's Taiwan/China people (reviewed on this blog here and here) that were essentially graceless and wrong-headed hacks on former President Chen Shui-bian's foreign policy, combined with folk tales about how the Establishment saved Asia by serving China's interests, and reassurances that EVERYTHING IS UNDER CONTROL. Please stop talking about the past, Obama folks. What many of us expats who love this place would like to hear is words about the future: words about commitment to Taiwan's future as an independent and sovereign state, and as an integral part of the US-led security alliance in Asia, and strong reassurances that an Obama victory isn't going to be followed by a renewed attempt to shove Taiwan into Beijing's maw.

Because what the recent melamine scandal really means is that economic integration of Taiwan and China is not going to be followed by political integration as the US political Establishment appears to hope, since each time Taiwanese get closer to China, they get reminded about what China really is. Taiwanese themselves have very clear views about their relationship with China: they are there to make money, not become a satrapy of Beijing.

It doesn't help that the pro-China party now running Taiwan -- the one that the US foreign policy establishment claims it helped install -- gives every appearance of being hopelessly incompetent....so "wretched" that even its political opponents want it to perform better, for the sake of the common good. KMT failures at home will not be good for the party's long-term plans to annex Taiwan to China. Folks, it's not too late to conclude that the wrong Horse was backed.....

[Taiwan]