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EVOLUTION OF A DREAM
01/22/2009
When I first heard Barack Obama speak four and a half years ago at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, I was impressed. I was actually more than impressed. It was a goose bumps kind of speech.
I heard people say he would be president one day, and I shared that sentiment though it did not occur to me then that he would become president in less than five years.
He was so young, so inexperienced. Yes he was an amazing speaker, but how could he possibly break that color barrier that prevented any person of African descent from becoming president when he had so little experience? Becoming the first black president would be no small thing. Maybe in 2016, I thought, after Hillary.
Then he announced his candidacy for the presidency and I sat up and took closer notice. I still thought he wouldn't make it. My cynical take on presidential campaigns is that people behind the scenes, people with money and influence, pull the strings and it is they who really choose the next president. I was convinced they had anointed Hillary as their candidate and though I wasn't a fan, I was convinced she would be the Democratic candidate and would defeat whomever the Republicans sent up as a sacrificial lamb. It was not a Republican year and the conservative giddiness over Sarah Palin did not change any of that.
But as Barack grew into a serious and skilled candidate, the dream of his becoming president grew on me.
It wasn't just his words, his gift of oratory, that convinced me he was the right choice.
It wasn't just his even temperament, his refusal to retaliate or get down in the dirt, his willingness to reach out a hand to his opponents, that did it, though that is and was impressive.
It wasn't even his ideas, because those were much the same as most of the other Democratic candidates.
The more I listened to Barack, the more I watched his speeches and observed him with his family and his supporters, the more I saw it. There is something of greatness in this man that cannot be explained, as if destiny has brought him to this moment the same way it brought Washington, Lincoln, FDR, Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr. to their moments of greatness.
As we look back on our relatively short history as a nation we see that as a people we move slowly, hold onto our prejudices, allow ourselves to go down the wrong road where we end up in terrible situations, and look upon change with suspicion. But from time to time we produce a remarkable leader who shows us the way out of those terrible situations. That leader seems ordinary at first, but eventually evolves into greatness. Each of them has a calm, even temperament, is not easily ruffled, and shows tremendous courage. This is what I began to see in Barack Obama.
Time after time when Hillary attacked him, he took it with grace and humor.
When McCain and Palin followed suit and tried to dismiss him as a celebrity before they attempted to paint him as a radical, he stuck to his message. He never once attacked Palin and always showed respect to McCain. Knowing as a black man he dared not show anger, and temperamentally disinclined to do so, he began to seduce those who thought he could not win.
Young people who have grown up in a world of diversity convinced their parents to listen to him. Baby boomers talked to their aging parents, as I did to mine, and helped them see past color. And after his victory in white Iowa, African Americans flocked to support him, thinking this time might be different.
Barack Obama, who on Tuesday became our first African American president, garnered 53% of the vote, a percentage unheard of in the last five presidential elections, and fulfilled the unspoken dreams of millions of Americans, as well as the spoken dream of one man: Martin Luther King, Jr.
From the day he announced, when he was the truly improbable candidate, to Tuesday when he was sworn in, Obama's support only grew, so that on the day of his inauguration, 80% of the country approved of him. Four fifths of the people of this country wish him well and want him to succeed. Even after his election, he is still winning people over because people see something in him they haven't seen in a long time.
They see honesty, and integrity, energy, and hope. They see determination and goodness and empathy for fellow citizens who are struggling and suffering. They see a contrast with George W. Bush, who regardless of how worthy and good he may be as an individual, was a terrible president whose policies showed neither honesty nor integrity, neither hope nor empathy.
They see a new start, a chance to bring to the American people greater safety and prosperity, more access to health care and the American dream. They see modeled in Barack Obama dignity and grace, and ambition as well as compassion. They see a man who came from humble beginnings and a somewhat chaotic childhood, and not only overcame them, but overcame the discrimination that always faced him as a black man.
I believe Barack Obama will be a good president, a good steward of the nation and a restorer of the Constitution. Whether or not he can be a great president remains to be seen. He has a lot of damage to attend to before he even has a chance to implement some of his new ideas. But at the very least, he will go down in history for breaking the color barrier that prevented black citizens from attaining the presidency. And I believe he will bring real compassion (not just campaign "compassion") back to government that he and his supporters no longer see as "the problem" Ronald Reagan once declared it to be. The era of conservative attacks on government as the enemy has ended with the election of Barack Obama. He will restore government to the standard Lincoln set: a government that is of, by and for the people.
I and my children know that we can always look back on the day of the inauguration of Barack Obama, an event that was once just a dream, and be proud that we supported him, happy to have participated in some way in bringing this man and his message to the White House. We know we have been on the right side of history and the forward movement of the American ideal. Regardless of what happens in the next four or eight years, we will always feel proud of that.
I know there are still about 20% of Americans who do not support Barack Obama, or worse, hope he fails. As we move into the future, should Obama be the great president he has the potential to be, I wonder how they will feel.
All content © 2005 outragedcitizen.com
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