Jennie Rothenberg Gritz, senior editor of The Atlantic Online talked with Archbishop Tutu in Boston shortly after the US presidential election. An extract:
You’ve described America as a “crazy country.” In your mind’s eye, what is America’s ideal role on the world stage?
The world accepts America’s leadership. But the world has been let down in the last eight years. The kind of America the world wants is not the unilateralist America, not the America who leads by being a bully-boy. The world wants the America who leads by collaborating, who leads by consulting.
You see already some examples of Obama’s style of leading. Right after the election, he was sitting with McCain and they were agreeing. That’s a fantastic image! It doesn’t happen in many countries in the world that people who are so at each other’s throats at a campaign can then sit and say, “We are going to collaborate.” That’s the style of leadership the world is so hungry for, where the leader asks, “What is your opinion, what is your opinion?”
The African in him is the one who is making him ask, “What is the consensus?” That’s the African way at its best. The good leader in Africa is the leader who keeps quiet and lets others speak and then says at the end, “I have heard you all, and this is our mind.”
Read it all here.