Reflections of Obama

I used to regularly blog on politics. In the last year or two, my interest has waned, and my life has filled with other things that called for my attention. Also, spending my days reading and writing technical manuals doesn't fill me with the desire to opine after hours, for some reason.

During the first six years of the Bush Administration, I ranted and raved about their abuses, their hubris, their lies, their incompetence. Eventually, though, I just got tired of being angry. I could not possibly sum up how I feel about the savage gang of pseudo-intellectual, faux-patriotic pimps, pushers, power whores, and cronies who have run rampant over this land in the past 8 years. Whole bookshelves have been written on the subject, and perhaps, after some time has passed, I'll be able to find the words to assess the damage done and make a reckoning. But that night is not this night. This is a night for celebration.

In 2004 I was paying very close attention to the political scene, keeping an eye on the electoral race, and struggling to decide whether to vote for a walking corpse named John Kerry, or abstain altogether in disgust. On election day, I made the decision to vote for Kerry. I wanted my voice to be heard in opposition to the Bush Administration.

I regretted my decision the next day when, knowing full well the extent of voting irregularities in the last election, knowing full well the conflicts of interest created by a Republican administration that had deeply stacked the deck, Kerry rolled over and conceded defeat before the all the votes had even been counted. Later, the Comptroller General of the United States released an official report casting doubt on the validity of that election, but by that time, Bush's power was too deeply entrenched to ignore.

But something had happened during that cycle, the importance of which hadn't been immediately obvious. While purusing a news story about the 2004 Democratic National Convention, I read that the keynote speech had been given to a guy I'd never heard of. So I hopped on Youtube (which I was in the proccess of falling in love with- I'm now an official Youtube whore), and watched the speech. Out of the convention hall and into the limelight strutted a skinny young black guy named Barack Obama. I scratched my head in wonder. As he began to speak, I consulted the almighty Google and discovered that he hadn't even been elected to national office yet (although he was a few weeks later, due in some part to that speech).

I wondered "who is this guy and why is he being put up front so quickly?" But a few minutes later, as his speech began to sink in, as I watched his delivery and listened to his words, I began to get it. He moved me. Now, I am a very cynical observer of politics, and I have a pretty good bullshit detector for rhetoric, and yes, there were passages that sounded like boilerplate liberal idealism. And I've since heard old school Obama staffers laughing at that speech, which is apparently his original stump speech that he used to give to 10 people at a time in small rooms in the south side of Chicago, when he was a community organizer. But for me, that's exactly the point. Obama personally wrote every word of that speech. How many politicans can say that? Cerntainly not our last President, that meely-mouthed imbecile.

By the end of his keynote speech, I found myself nearly at the point of tears, amazed to hear a politician who sounded like he actually believed what he was saying. I could hear in his voice and see in his demeanor that he was not, like most candidates, from old money, or an established political family, had not been groomed from birth, that he had earned his way to where he was through hard work. I could feel it. And for a moment, I thought "this guy could be the first black president".

I didn't expect it to be so soon.

But here we are, scarcely four years later. These moments are generational. When, in late 2005, he asked one of his political mentors, Tom Daschle, if he thought he should run, Daschle said, "if you're ever going to do it, now's the time". He was right. We needed fresh blood. We needed a change.

Don't get me wrong. In the long run, Obama may or may not be able to change anything. I tried hard during his campaign not to fall in love with him so that he couldn't break my heart. But I couldn't pass up the chance to support what appeared to be the only political candidate in my lifetime that I could actually feel good about. I researched him as much as I could, read his critics extensively, watched all his major speeches (the 2004 DNC keynote, the Brandenburg Gate speech, the nomination acceptance speech, the speech on race, etc.), watched him debate, watched him stump. I couldn't find a single fuckup. Name any other politician and you can find a clip on Youtube of them making a major fuckup. Not Obama. Not in two long years of campaiging. The mind boggles.

He won, not only in spite of his name, race, and background, but he won decisivley, the largest popular vote in American history. He redrew the map of the American political spectrum, just like he said he would.

I promised myself when he was elected that I'd give him until at least Inauguration Day before I start kicking his ass. And yes, my friends, I will kick his ass. Because I voted for him, and because my taxes pay his salary, and because I respect my duty as a citizen in a demoratic republic to remain aware and involved, it is my duty to kick his ass.

But not today. Today, in the elevator at work, I talked to Finneus. He's the old black man that washes cars in the third sub-basement, where I park my car. We usually wave at each other, and once he helped me get into my car, when I'd locked my keys in it. Today he was grinning from ear to ear. He said he'd taken the morning off to watch the inauguration. I told him I could scarcely believe it was true. Then he said something I'll never forget. He put his hands to his face and said "I had tears streaming down my cheeks". We smiled at each other for a long moment, then I patted him on the back and walked away.

So here's to the new president, to the new American spirit. This spirit of change, the spirit of hope and renewal, may not last, it may soon be bludgeoned by the realities of war and economic collapse. But for this moment, I'm deeply grateful for Barack Obama.

Stay tuned for my next article about why Obama's national security cabinet appointments make me nervous and angry.