THE NEWS that Barack Obama arose at 5.30 am (!) to “work out” on the morning of his inauguration must have sent a shiver through the hearts of men of all religions and hues across the world.
It seems clear now that the boundless energy that this man flaunts is going to have terrible repercussions for slackers everywhere. It doesn’t matter whether you are a bushwhacker lazing in a hammock in the Australian outback or a German hippy fond of cultivating weed on a restored tenement cottage outside Bohola, there can be no escaping the fact that Mr Obama has just raised the bar for every man.
Credit where it is due: the man is a miracle. His official age is 47. But he conducts himself with the maturity, poise and intellectual rigour of a 57-year-old, he looks like a 37-year-old, has the street credibility of a 27-year-old and the energy and optimism of a 17-year-old.
Most men of 47 wish they were 37, feel and move like they are 57, can’t really remember being 27 and behave and dress like they are about to turn 17. Most 47-year-old men are in crisis and who the hell can blame them.
But Mr Obama carries off the trickiest of ages effortlessly, not showing the slightest bit of sympathy for the millions of “ordinary” brothers who share with him the demographic of being born in 1961.
There is no question that he deserves all the plaudits. He is worth this global adoration. If the crowd that showed up in Washington last week is anything to go by, he is the most popular “guy” on the planet right now – forget about it Simon Cowell, forget about it.
Watching the panoramic view of the two million people who showed up to witness Obama’s moment, one couldn’t help recall the infamous, off-the-cuff remark that John Lennon made about popularity, the Beatles and the Man Above all those years ago.
Nobody has a bad word to say about the guy. He kills cynicism. On Newsnight the other evening, there was Jeremy Paxman, the lemony suspicion gone from his face and replaced by fluttering eyelashes and the dopey grin of a lovelorn schoolgirl.
And with good reason too. It could well be that Obama is going to save the world from itself. It could well be that he will calm the neurosis and paranoia that has afflicted the money men in all the major cities, that he will introduce a reign of peace to the Middle East and persuade life forms from other galaxies that human kind is worth contacting after all.
Fashionistas have declared him to be a saviour: a politician with a classy dress sense. Seamus Heaney has recognised him as a writer. Jay-Z has all but acknowledged that Obama is cooler than him. The man is hip, debonair, smart and, of course, self-deprecating to the last. He is, as the kids say, the Bomb. But still: pumping steel at 5.30am? Hitting the treadmill before dawn? Is that kind of needless perfectionism not rubbing our noses in it a little bit?
This is January and millions of people are still clinging on to those New Year’s resolutions to be more virtuous and god-fearing and healthy. In the old days, when Barack Obama was just an unknown law student blithely making his way towards becoming the most famous man on earth, Nike ran a series of ad campaigns around the supernova basketball player Michael Jordan, using the slogan: “Be Like Mike”.
The intention was to offer a kind of mock inspiration: nobody could even remotely hope to play the game of basketball like Jordan, but they could at least try to replicate his work ethic and ferocious determination.
Since the zenith of his global fame a decade ago, Jordan has virtually disappeared from view and a series of younger, more lithe pretenders have stepped in to fill the considerable void. Jordan has “gone upstairs” as part owner of an NBA club, trying to find new ways to placate the incredible energy and restlessness that pushed him to greatness in his younger days.
But one imagines that even Jordan might be slightly intimidated by the daunting breath of energy displayed by Barack Obama (And Jordan, at 45, is two years younger).
Obama’s fitness regime has already become global consumer news. He runs hard, lifts steel, pushes iron and stretches. And he does all this in what is, essentially, the middle of the night.
Most people go on purges every now and again. Many men take a notion and set the alarm so that they can take an early-morning plunge in the pool or go pounding the roads because this is the year they are going finally to run that marathon.
Thing is, afterwards, they can console themselves with a coffee and a treacly bun and take it handy for the morning. But when Obama covers his 10k and ticks off his 400 one-hand press-ups, he has to skip away to save the world from impending doom!
When most people are grinding their way through 15 minutes of Forest Hills on the bicycle, they fret about what to have for dinner or whether the latest episode of House is showing. But when Obama is pedalling, he has to consider the best way to approach his 8am phone call with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And those gym sessions are just to perk him up for the day, his equivalent of a double espresso. When he really wants to burn off steam, he plays full court basketball.
Needless to say, reliable accounts say he is a genuine “baller”; smooth, confident and tough. Signs on him, as they say. Late last year, photographs were circulated which showed Obama emerging from tropical waters displaying the kind of pectorals and form that made Daniel Craig’s 007 look butty in comparison. Those snaps probably brought on a severe crisis of body image in David Beckham and other sensitive souls.
And Becks is still in his early 30s.
The days when world leaders looked like Winston Churchill and Charles De Gaulle are, sadly, over. We – as in mankind – have four full years of Mr Obama and his celebrated daily fitness regimen ahead of us. Slowly but surely, the Obama lifestyle – his relentless pursuit of physical perfection and his refusal to allow his primary duty of making the world a better place prevent him from bounding about gymnasiums like an Olympian on speed – is going to have consequences for all of us.
Sooner or later, wives, girlfriends, sisters, mothers, grandmothers are going to take one look at the big O and one look at their loved one and ask themselves: why can’t he be like Barack?
You will know for sure that the Obama Revolution has kicked in when you find yourself on your ass on some freezing, dark morning groaning your way through 1,000 sit-ups and knowing that your 5km run has yet to come.
You can see it now. Obama’s plan is fiendishly cunning. The man is simply going to exhaust everyone into a state of world peace.
“You will know for sure that the Obama Revolution has kicked in when you find yourself on your ass on some freezing, dark morning groaning your way through 1,000 sit-ups and knowing that your 5km run has yet to come
