Change We Must Believe In
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
I still can’t believe it. I mean, I was pretty sure – all the polls and news reports suggested it was a fait accompli – Barack Obama would be our next President. But still, would it…COULD it happen? In a world in which lingering questions remained about everything from buggy Diebold voting machines to hidden-in-the-booth racism (the so-called Bradley effect) could easily turn things the other way.
But this time was different, somehow. After years of such rancor and fear it has felt like people were ready for a clean slate. It seemed to me to be like it must have felt when JFK was running against Nixon – a fresh start versus the old guard. Even my Dad showed a level of interest and passion I had never seen him express about politics. In fact we had our first conversations about politics that I could ever recall.
I’ve never held back on my utter disdain for George Bush and his policies. I had always considered him incompetent, but I naively thought he would be harmlessly so. After all, we were coming off a time of budgetary surplus and prosperity and while the decline of the Tech boom was fresh the outlook was perhaps cloudy but certainly not bleak. Then came 9/11 and the sense that the imperfect Bush was somehow rising to the occasion appeared possible. Then it all came apart. The revelations of the 9/11 commission, the intelligence failures, the blame everything on Clinton ethos – the passing of the buck response to every single mistake. Katrina. Iraq. Abu Ghraib. Guantanamo. Enron. The list kept growing and it was never, ever their fault. Then the banking collapse. – One caused not by weakened governmental oversight and the conversion of mortgages into commodities to be bundled and traded like bacon or cotton but by the audacity of people that purchased homes.
This was not the United States of America I knew. Not the nation that had survived facing down everything from civil war to fascism. This was a nation in a state of constant fear and distraction – so long as we stuck a Chinese-made US flag magnet on our SUV and shopped we were doing our duty. It was frankly pathetic.
Then here comes along a junior Senator from Illinois. A guy with solid scholastic and legal credentials, but hardly a player in the political scene. Clearly the 2006 elections showed that disaffection (to be kind) with the status quo was growing, but the new guy against the Clintonian machine? No way. Then he started to talk to town after town, group after group. Momentum built not because he was an established player but to a large degree because he wasn’t one. All the usual mud slinging attacks merely bounced off because people finally realized that’s all they were. The fear mongering bounced in the conservative echo chamber with nobody paying attention. The same folks that John McCain had been victimized by in 2000 now advocated on his behalf pushing non-stories like William Ayres and…nobody bit. The focus was on the ideals, the ideas and the inspiration. The sense that our nation could turn the page and get to work getting back on track and back to our place of honor.
I don’t expect that Obama will walk in and fix things easily. We’re up to our ears in debt and our schools, military, foreign relations and infrastructure are in bad shape. But there is a sense that better days lie ahead. There is a sense of optimism we have not felt as a nation in a long time. A wide swath of our nation elected a black man from humble roots President. It’s something that every American, no matter their political position, should think about and smile. We’ve told not just the world but ourselves that we want our nation to aspire and achieve greatness.
I’m proud of us.