As the intro to this piece says, I'm sending this revised essay to my email contacts ... my contribution to the campaign.
I’m voting for Barack Obama, and
despite ridiculous nervousness, I’m sending this declaration to my entire email
list. I know everyone else is
doing it, but it feels risky, that maybe I should choose a safer topic. Sometimes I wonder if maybe I should
choose a safer candidate, too.
However, I realize I no longer know
what “safe” means. The dictionary
suggests two things: doing what
we’ve always done and staying out of harm’s way. As if they’re inextricably linked. As if traveling the same road is the only harmless
route.
But what if business-as-usual is destructive? What if real threats keep leaping from
trees along that well-worn path, even though the sign reads, familiar and implies safe? My dictionary
doesn’t list different and great in the same entry. It’s as if I need to invent a new
language before I can walk a road both new and improved.
Yet, I support Barack Obama because he
is a life-affirming choice, and so despite his difference, he is my safest
choice. My life, business as
usual, doesn’t feel very safe. I
have astronomically expensive health insurance that I’m afraid will be
cancelled if I actually file a claim.
I fear I can’t afford gas in my daughter’s car, let alone her college
tuition. Economic collapse means
clients can’t hire me. My
electronics are Asian, my car German, tech support from India, alternative
energy technology from Europe … while the quality of U.S. k-12 education
plummets, the cost of higher education spirals, and our ingenuity and workforce are
left in the international dust.
China may steal our infamous distinction as the world’s largest global
warmer, but we’ve been actively fighting the obvious a lot longer, and unlike
our global peers, we haven’t invested real money or muscle to fix the
problem. All that, and
we’re fighting a wildly expensive war (that’s lasted longer than WW II), and most
of the world hates what our current administration has done.
Yet,
it still feels scary to vote for a man who ignores traditional rules of this
game and asks me to do the same.
It’s easy to be cynical about a politician’s slimy attempts to turn
patriotism into a flag-waving sound bite.
But I pause each time Obama does something different: opposing the Iraq
invasion before it happened; refusing
to lie about his aimless freshman year or his controversial former pastor;
describing real problems intelligently and with the complexity they deserve;
and calling us on our own racism, ignorance, and hatred. Asked about health care, Obama also explores
health, deftly saying that eating fast food and watching too much tv and video
games are as destructive as inadequate insurance. He tells white folks to start sharing the sidewalk with
black folks, and that I should recognize all children, no matter how poor, as
my own. He describes openly my own
secret angers and fears about preferential treatment and urban violence, and he
challenges me to let them go. And
he told a black audience in Ebenezer Baptist Church on Martin Luther King Jr.
Day to stop being homophobic and anti-Semitic. Usually only comics touched those subjects, and, sure, Chris
Rock always makes me laugh. But
Obama makes me think … and strive.
However,
I’m not accustomed to politicians treating me like an adult or saying controversial
– yet obvious -- things out loud.
I have been so lulled by our version of the Roman Forums -- loud,
mindless, simpleton arguments that have become the spectator sport we call
politics – that I have forgotten what leadership looks like. I agonized watching the first debate,
hoping in vain Obama would go for McCain’s jugular so pundits would declare his
unequivocal victory. Until I
remembered, embarrassed by my own tunnel vision, that true leadership has very
little to do with verbally eviscerating an opponent on national television. Our next president will need tremendous
intelligence, strategic patience, strong relationships, clear-headed
decisiveness, and – dare I say it – noble integrity and charisma. Obama’s impeccable drama-free campaign,
the way he inspires a crowd or took non-partisan, well-informed charge the
morning our economy collapsed … these things more vividly illustrate his
leadership than televised sparing matches and commentary drivel we disguise as
political discourse.
Obama’s
campaign of hope has been maligned as naive and unrealistic, yet I believe the
criticisms grow from a deeper terror.
Obama asks us to take stock of our lives, both personal and
political. To see our current
circumstances as direct results of our choices, perceptions, and actions, and
to become more conscious and thoughtful about those things. But, frankly, I’ve been lazy. For too long I have sustained myself on
spoon-fed watered-down politics, figuring pundits have more time than I do to
research such things. Assuming
most politicians are in bed with corporate lobbyists feels oddly less frightening
than knowing Obama is beholden to the millions of us who’ve contributed
$25. Sure I feel more empowered,
but I also feel more responsible, more on the line .... more vulnerable. I have to lower my cynical guard and be
engaged in the future of my country in ways that feel new, and surprisingly
scary. I used to have an excuse – when I believed politics would never change,
I could live my life and ignore the actions of my nation that did not affect me
directly. But Obama says our
country, our troubles, our lives are
a complicated mess for clear reasons, with complex, risky -- yet doable --
solutions. And that I must
participate. Typical politicians
go for political expediency, let us off the hook, and we feel safe as a result. A presidential candidate who examines
his own life and vision with honest integrity and asks a nation to do the same
seems so … radical.
It creates an incomprehensible
mathematical proof: the safe way
of politics has created exceptional danger; the only way out is to follow a
radically different course; yet that course initially feels so damn unsafe
…
