11.05.08
President Obama
Barack Obama has won the election. I want to say that again, not because you need to be told, but because I genuinely feel good about saying it: Barack Obama has won the election. This is a matter of great pride for me. Never in my life have I been able to take such a deep interest and even pride in the words and deeds of a candidate for public office. I found myself genuinely inspired by his ideas and his mannerisms because something in him made me want to believe that transformation was possible. Obama’s appeal was intellectual to be sure, but I cannot pretend that much of what he did for me was emotional. He managed, in a way no politician I’ve ever known in my lifetime has done, to connect the rational solutions that the country needed to the emotional energy of the pulpit.
Mr. Obama possesses that rarest of qualities that enables him to stay calm and to fairly and firmly give problems their deserved level severity. Because of the crises he faces, it is in light of this quality that I heave a sigh of relief, but with a sense of trepidation on the eve of his victory. The challenges that now face Obama are so daunting, that I find it difficult to believe that the political physics of our epoch will enable him to really accomplish what he should and must. However, he is a man who has shown his ability to stay calm and focused regardless of the storms around him. He has shown that he has that special character to face down problems without flinching, and to stay consistent and calm in the face of them. We have made, in my opinion, not only the correct choice, but the only one really left to us. John McCain simply could not have shouldered such a burden with the same grace and elegance.
In other words, I am happy with this election. My own political identity was forged during the campaign of Al Gore, a man for whom I still have considerable respect. He too, I believed to be a transformational figure in our politics, who thought that government had a job to do, and that his job was to help it to do that job. His mistake was in proving unable to communicate that vision to the people. As a result, the election went to to the forces that believe government should be locked into a vice that serves a little use to most people as possible. Mr. Obama has succeeded where Mr. Gore could not. He has managed to make the technical problems of government tangible things to the people, and has in some sense, redefined how many Americans envision the duty of the big machine we name “government.”
Ultimately, Mr. Obama represents a revolution in our politics. He may be; and I can only hope this proves true, be representative of a new progressive era. An era of thinkers and politicians who do not think only of party, but of progress and results. I want Obama to usher in an era in which our politicians understand government to be an incredibly powerful tool, and that the role of politicians should be to strengthen and improve, not weaken and belittle that apparatus. Only a change in the tone of leadership can do that. This goes to the core of what Mr. Obama represents. Do I expect miracles? Do I expect everything to get better? No. I expect that people will change their thinking – the one thing that a successful revolution must do, and the one thing that most fail to accomplish.
I have high hopes for our small revolution though. We have chosen this. Finally, at long last, we have chosen to make a change. This election has none of the close calls of the previous. Nor has it been seemingly stolen by political machines that have tried to undermine the system for their own gain. It was not close. This election is the first in eight years that we actually can say, positively, reliably, that we own. Since I reached the age of consent and earned the right to vote, both of the presidential elections I voted in gave victory by a razor’s edge, and only with considerable controversy. This is the first time that I have seen a president in power who actually possesses the blessing of the majority of the people. We have also seen a return to centrism and progressivism – what might be coined the notion of a valueless government – that lost idea that government’s business isn’t your business, but should instead enable you to do and act and to thrive.
Already, the repercussions of this election can be seen. By way of evidence, allow me to share an anecdote:
I live in
In Korean she says to me, “Who is winning the election?”
I reply, in my poor Korean, “It’s finished. Obama has won the election.”
She smiles at me so broadly that it makes my heart rise into my throat, sighs with relief, and says, “that’s wonderful.”
It is wonderful.