Like many Americans, I wanted to find out more about various candidates before making a decision on who I’d prefer to see running our country in 2008 and beyond. Unlike many Americans, however, I elected not to base my opinions on candidates on media-propagated stereotypes and partisan caricatures; I decided to actually take it into my own hands to learn more and form my own opinions.
That’s why I recently read “The Audacity of Hope” by Barack Obama. His star has risen so quickly within and outside the Democratic party that everyone is scrambling to find his weak spot, to uncover the skeletons in his closet. He’s not the ideal candidate, and there will remain questions about him just like there should be questions about every candidate until they are held over the fire of office. But I have personally learned enough to feel that he’s what both parties — and the American people — need right now. Here are a few of the things that he wrote that spoke to me:
"If anything, what struck me was just how modest people's hopes were, and how much of what they believed seemed to hold constant across race, region, religion, and class. Most of them thought that anybody willing to work should be able to find a job that paid a living wage. They figured that people shouldn't have to file for bankruptcy because they got sick. They believed that every child should have a genuinely good education — that it shouldn't just be a bunch of talk — and that those same children should be able to go to college even if their parents weren't rich. They wanted to be safe, from criminals and from terrorists; they wanted clean air, clean water, and time with their kids. And when they got old, they wanted to be able to retire with some dignity and respect.
"That was about it. It wasn't much. And although they understood that how they did in life depended mostly on their own efforts — although they didn't expect government to solve all their problems, and certainly didn't like seeing their tax dollars wasted — they figured that government should help.
"I told them that they were right: government couldn't solve all their problems. But with a slight change in priorities we could make sure every child had a decent shot at life and meet the challenges we faced as a nation."
"I am a Democrat, after all; my views on most topics correspond more closely to the editorial pages of the New York Times than those of the Wall Street Journal. I am angry about policies that consistently favor the wealthy and powerful over average Americans, and insist that government has an important role in opening up opportunity to all. I believe in evolution, scientific inquiry, and global warming; I believe in free speech, whether politically correct or politically incorrect, and I am suspicious of using government to impose anybody's religious beliefs — including my own — on nonbelievers. Furthermore, I am a prisoner of my own biography: I can't help but view the American experience through the lens of a black man of mixed heritage, forever mindful of how generations of people who looked like me were subjugated and stigmatized, and the subtle and not so subtle ways that race and class continue to shape our lives.
"But that is not all that I am. I also think my party can be smug, detached, and dogmatic at times. I believe in the free market, competition, and entrepreneurship, and think no small number of government programs don't work as advertised. I wish the country had fewer lawyers and more engineers. I think America has more often been a force for good than for ill in the world; I carry few illusions about our enemies, and revere the courage and competence of our military. I reject a politics that is based solely on racial identity, gender identity, sexual orientation, or victimhood generally. I think much of what ails the inner city involves a breakdown in culture that will not be cured by money alone, and that our values and spiritual life matter at least as much as our GDP."
"Undoubtedly, some of these views will get me in trouble. I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views."
"Individually, Democratic legislators and candidates propose a host of sensible if incremental ideas, on energy and education, health care and homeland security, hoping that it all adds up to something resembling a governing philosophy. Mainly, though, the Democratic Party has become the party of reaction. In reaction to a war that is ill conceived, we appear suspicious of all military action. In reaction to those who proclaim the market can cure all ills, we resist efforts to use market principles to tackle pressing problems. In reaction to religious overreach, we equate tolerance with secularism, and forfeit the moral language that would help infuse our policies with larger meaning. We lose elections and hope for the courts to foil Republican plans. We lose the courts and wait for a White House scandal."
"In other words, the Ownership Society doesn't even try to spread the risks and rewards of the new economy among all Americans. Instead, it simply magnifies the uneven risks and rewards of today's winner-take-all economy. If you are healthy or wealthy or just plain lucky, then you will become more so. If you are poor or sick or catch a bad break, you will have nobody to look to for help. That's not a recipe for sustained economic growth or the maintenance of a strong American middle class. It's certainly not a recipe for social cohesion. It runs counter to those values that say we have a stake in each other's success.
"It's not who we are as a people."
"What would that be worth to all of us — an America in which crime has fallen, more children are cared for, cities are reborn, and the biases, fear, and discord that black poverty feeds are slowly drained away? Would it be worth what we've spent in the past year in Iraq? Would it be worth relinquishing demands for estate tax repeal? It's hard to quantify the benefits of such changes — precisely because the benefits would be immeasurable."
"Perhaps someone inside the White House has clear answers to these [foreign policy] questions. But our allies — and for that matter our enemies — certainly don't know what those answers are. More important, neither do the American people. Without a well-articulated strategy that the public supports and the world understands, America will lack the legitimacy — and ultimately the power — it needs to make the world safer than it is today."
"For I am getting to an age where I have a sense of what satisfies me, and although I am perhaps more tolerant of compromise … I know that my satisfaction is not to be found in the glare of television cameras or the applause of the crowd. Instead, it seems to come more often now from knowing that in some demonstrable way I've been able to help people live their lives with some measure of dignity. I think of what Benjamin Franklin wrote to his mother, explaining why he had devoted so much of his time to public service: 'I would rather have it said, He lived usefully, than, He died rich.'"
For good measure, he’s also the subject of the most powerful and moving campaign video that I’ve ever seen … and I’m impressed that he’s willing to embrace the undeniable, overriding political message of the 21st century:
Scarlett. Johansson. Gets. Votes.*
* My WWSJD bracelet is on back order as we speak.
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