I voted for Barack Obama last week under Illinois' new early ballot system. I did so mostly with enthusiasm, certainly more than I would have had for any other candidate beyond Joe Biden, whom I supported last year until his poor showing in the Iowa caucuses. Senator Obama's selection of Biden for Vice-President only made whatever ambivalence I may have felt dissipate basically disappear. So I voted for the Obama-Biden ticket and hope they will win in two weeks.
Saying "whatever ambivalence," however, implies that I have at least some reservations about Obama or, more specifically, what he generally represents. I do not doubt that Senator Obama is both a decent and ambitious man. Those are not irreconcilable categorizations and I do not exclude Senator McCain from them either. In the last several years--even stretching over the last quarter century--however, I have come to question not simply the reasonableness, but what I'll call the "awareness" on the part of left wing as well as right wing orthodoxy. If their adherents would go so far as to admit their own limitations and, as the best theological thinkers might put it, acknowledge the "context" of the conclusions they reach, I might be more hopeful about what remains possible in our common life together.
My experience, nevertheless, has been mostly contrary to the hopes of my youth and early manhood. Both wings, left and right, are well-represented and quite vocal throughout our society, demanding that anyone with sense and decency come to their senses and adopt whichever flap of orthodoxy happens to be on the television or internet screen at a particular moment. It makes reasoned conversation and plausible solutions almost beyond the skill of our best politicians and past the common sense of our fellows who live in parts of the country where no one will even think of spending time in a coffee shop. We have come to live in an increasingly stratified society, one where notions of "one society" or "common purpose" or "common values" has come to be either labelled with every left wing epithet imaginable or defended with every right wing epithet imaginable. We're seeing--not surprisingly--a great deal of both wings flapping furiously as the election itself draws closer by the day.
Here is where I think Senator Obama gives us the best opportunity to at least tone down the hatred, disgust and demonization of those with whom we disagree. My reasoning is not primarily related to his mixed ancestry, although perhaps that may help in some way. It also does not have much to do with his "calm, cool demeanor" in a crisis that his campaign staff has been mouthing too much for my taste in recent weeks. As Ernest Hemingway reminds us, however, showing grace under pressure isn't necessarily that bad of an idea. I also do not worry too much about whether Obama somehow stayed altogether clear of the shenanigans in Chicago politics. If he did, so much the better. If he didn't, I'm not too sure that either the RNC or Senator McCain or Governor Palin can cast too many stones without worrying about their lack of culpability in their local settings. Bridges can be built to nowhere, it seems, in Chicago or anyplace else for that matter.
What I believe Obama represents is more that I think he actually believes how we as a country are, in fact, a common country. He understands the need to recognize the multiplicity of viewpoints and perspectives, but does not allow that to morph into--metaphorically at least--these experiences taking their chairs away from the one table in the room. At the same time, Obama, in fact, recognizes that we as Americans share something beyond a continent of land. We actually do share a set of values, a mutual outlook and the bare-bones reality that like it or not, we are all in this together. In short, I think Obama understands both the singular and dual nature of who we are as Americans and invites people to avoid emphasizing one to the expense of the other.
I can argue that belief with some degree of confidence after I heard Obama's remarks the night he won the South Carolina primary last, I believe, early February. Of course what he said was a political speech with the next set of caucuses and primaries in mind. Of course what he said was to emphasize his credentials as a Democrat to lead Democrats back to the White House. But something else was there: something to which he neither had to express or allude on a night of political victory. Obama specifically indicated that he believed we as Americasn shared a common link even as we are different. He mentioned that his support had generated an increase in voter turnout, which for him indicated that inviting people to "hope" was something that a good many people desperately wanted. Not so much "hope" in a specific set of policies, but something along the lines that Robert Kennedy indicated the night he won the California primary or the night Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed: that in spite of our divisions and in spite of our self-doubts and seeming inability to listen to one another, we can begin to embrace something different even when it seems hopeless to even try.
Obama concluded that night with an anecdote about why several of his campaign workers had expended such effort for him. He mentioned how one person affiliated with former Republican and Dixiecrat Senator Strom Thurmond had seen something beyond the ordinary in what Obama was saying and had enrolled to help. Then Obama told the story of how an older black man and a younger white woman were asked why they had signed on: the white woman indicated, as I recall, something along the lines of hope and exhaustion in how she felt about the country (this is a lot of paraphrasing, so forgive me if I am a bit or more than a bit off here). The somewhat older black man, sitting immediately next to his white fellow campaign worker, then said according to Senator Obama, "I'm here because of (the young white woman's name)."
That statement did not have a lot to do with proclamations of "justice" or a belief that God chooses sides between American politicians. It did, however, have something to do with overcoming suspicion and weariness and a good bit of history just long enough to begin to see, experience and feel one another as human beings. That statement will not solve the interrelated problems we Americans face among ourselves or throughout the world. It will not somehow magically lead to an adoption of this or that economic policy or health care plan or find another Harry Blackmun for the Supreme Court. It might, at the same time, allow for civility and decency and a hand shake across the aisle when a day's debate is done. I think Senator Obama represents the chance we have to create an atmosphere where that handshake can take place. I think a good way to start, if he actually wins, is to award Senator John Sidney McCain III the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his lifetime of heroism, sacrifice and service to our one common country.
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5 comments:
Nice post. You are far more optimistic than I could ever be about a single person turning this supertanker of a government around. And that is what elections are about: government, no more, no less. Finding "common values" and the like is left to civil society. Government, by its very nature, is divided and riven by interest groups. Obama shows no ambition or ability to transcend interest-group positions. He is a nice man, like the contender, who appeals to the various interests that will ever be in discord.
I do feel there will be a sharp lurch to the Left if the Democrats get a filibuster-proof majority. Center-left or center-right government will take a hiatus and there will be less retrainst, rather than more under one-party rule. IMHO.
When this long, strange trip we call an election cycle began, I believed, as you suggest, that Barack Obama could be a unifying figure and that he would be the Democrat most palatable to independents and moderate Republicans like myself. Obviously, I am a McCain supporter down to the marrow, but I felt either man could ease the half hating the other half which has characterized American politics for the last sixteen years. I don't believe that anymore.
Like most Americans, I was judging Obama on his personality and rhetoric. As the campaign progressed, though I began to learn about his record and that view changed. On the issues which matter most to conservatives--tax policy, abortion, and national security--Obama's voting record is far left. If he governs as he has voted, he will engender vigorous fighting and resulting hatred from his ideological opposites, resulting in four or eight more years of partisan rancor.
This division has already been exacerbated by his supporters' insistence on playing the race card. Certainly, there have been examples of right-wingers race-baiting, but nothing from the McCain camp could be accurately described that way. They've thrown nothing at him that wouldn't have been thrown at a white politician, and, frankly, I'm convinced they've actually gone softer than they would have on John Edwards, for example. Still, John Lewis and many others have attacked the McCain campaign as racist. Those attacks have inflamed the right and guarantee bitterness for the next four years if Obama is elected--the same kind of bitterness caused by Ross Perot in 1992 and the Florida recount in 2000.
In fairness, the same will occur if McCain is elected. Obama supporters will claim it was dirty campaigning and racism that put McCain in the White House.
Thanks to both of the above responders: even if I don't necessarily agree with their assessment of the macro or microcosmic problems we face, they each are still the best examples of common civility and decency so sorely missing from our discussions over the last quarter century--or more.
A good assessment of the election and Obama's stance. Even in the comments posted here, though, I still see a lot of distrust and anxiety. Chrisallen, for example, says that Obama's ticket "plays the race card". That implies that bringing race into the election is just a ploy. It's not. Race matters, as Cornel West has said, and it's about time that we have a president who is not part of the white anglo-saxon protestant group that has dominated American politics for the last 250 years. It's going to be a good change, with new ideas brought about as a result of different experiences.
I don't disagree with the first premise in Ron's response that we need a new President. I do find issue, however, with the second half of his argument that a new set of experiences will somehow lead to different--better--conclusions. Different experiences based on some factor other than being a white anglo-saxon protestant male (John Kennedy was, indicentally, Roman Catholic while Abrhama Lincoln famously belonged to no specific branch of Judeo-Christian faith) is, ever logically, to affirm that race matters. So we've affirmed Cornel West by affirming Cornel West.
We might also wonder if by saying--as it most certainly does--that race matters, we are not, in fact, playing the race card ourselves. Are we saying that our playing of it is necessarily more kind, more just and more reasonable than what has taken place previously? Or what McCain's campaign has done throughout the year? Does not our basic argument as liberals become that when we use race, we do it for the good of everyone, but when McCain or Sarah Palin or a New Critic does it in defense of examining literature for something other than a "hidden" political root, it is done to maintain "cultural, social, gender, sexual, class and racial" hegemony?
I write thewse questions, truth be told, without answers or even hints at something vaguely approaching answers. I am convinced, however, that to cliam that Obama's Presidency--if it happens--will be beneficial to the country and the world simply because he is not a WASP male is to cuase us more societal separation--the nature of sin--and suspicion when we simply cannot afford it.
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