Ponderings

On the morning after, I have only one correction to the Super Tuesday pundits: Obama is anything but the ‘anybody but’ candidate.

As the pundits occupied prime time on Super Tuesday, I found myself thoroughly enjoying their banter. This is simply a splendid year to enjoy politics. Some of the talk resonated, some of it was thought provoking. One particular quote struck a nerve and kept me pondering longer than the others. Peggy Noonan, known best as President Reagan’s speech writer, was commenting on Obama’s appeal. When asked whether Obama was a movement, Noonan replied that Obama is a persona that “isn’t Her”. She went on to explain that Obama is the candidate of choice for those who want ‘anybody but’ Hillary.

I understand alternative candidates and have voted for many. I understand casting my vote for the lesser of two perceived evils. ‘Anybody but’ is a mantra that many of us know well. So Noonan’s words sounded innocuous at the time. But in the light of day, I find myself wanting my turn at the microphone because this time isn’t about the ‘anybody but’. I support Barack Obama. I have given money to his campaign. A couple of times even. But my support for Obama isn’t about my dislike of anybody else. To suggest that Obama is a lesser of evil’s discredits everyone in the race, and that in a year when we have a variety of admirable candidates. In fact for the first time in my memory I find myself feeling generally at ease with a variety of the candidates in both parties.

Mike Huckabee will not vote the ways that I would chose, but I trust that he is well intentioned, sincere, and intelligent. We could do worse. I’m disappointed with McCain’s repositioning on issues that matter to me, like choice and equality, but he too is a man of integrity. Given that my own political and social values veer to the left of the democrats, I can be forgiven for preferring the Democratic candidates this season. Edwards, for instance, was my man for the detail on issues.

Hillary is, as Noonan wants to emphasize, a different breed. She’s a woman. Admittedly I’ve been a bit cool towards Hillary. There is simply no way for her to embody the leadership qualities that we expect and need in a president and to simultaneously embody the cultural virtues of (diminutive) womanhood on which we were weaned. The expectations are mutually incompatible and our dis-ease with Hillary is more about us than her. Consequently she is the most vulnerable to the pundits and to perhaps even to our ‘anybody but’ style of candidate choosing. Despite the inherent vulnerability, I believe that Hillary Clinton would be an excellent president. If not from ‘Day 1’, she clearly has both the innate ability and inside knowledge to hit the ground running and would do so. I am totally comfortable supporting a Hillary presidency.

It is a pleasant irony, then, that my first contribution to a presidential campaign comes in a year when many of the candidates have earned my respect and several could comfortably win my vote. My willingness to put even my check book on the line for Barack Obama is about who he is, not who he isn’t. Obama is many things in this campaign, the “anybody but” candidate is not one of them.

My husband commented that I’ve been waiting for Obama for a lifetime, and I suspect he’s right. Reared in the shadow of Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy, raised with the silenced questions of Malcolm X and Bobby Kennedy, I have long been on the lookout for a leader that could transcend the minefield of race and class in America. A leader who could name both the sin and the path of redemption, a leader who could hold accountable with a hand outstretched. Obama is that leader for our generation.

My support for Barack Obama is not about any particular plan or program, but rather about a vision for us as a people. To be sure, he has offered plans for health care, education, and our disentanglement with Iraq. Quite frankly, I think I like Edward’s fine print better. But still I choose Obama. Although the plans are significant, the details will change long before implementation. What won’t change in November is the candidate’s ability to inspire. In part the Obama campaign is a brilliant if shameless appeal to sentimentality. The “Yes, We Can” video on You Tube is a tear-jerker long on emotion and slight on content. But every time I hear the music begin, it stirs something deep within. We have had many good presidents over the past four decades, but not one of them has had Obama’s ability to inspire.

Reading Obama’s description of his early years in his pre-political memoir, Dreams of my Father, one quickly discovers the content beneath the emotion. Obama gets it and names it in a way that we’ve not seen in any other candidate. Ever. The ‘it’ he gets is the convergence of race, class, and power in our country; the ways in which our assumptions empower and dis-empower, the ways in which his children and mine have both similar and different doors open to them by virtue of their zip code and their hair texture. Obama gets it. He names it. But more importantly, he believes in an America beyond it and dares us to do the same.

Arianna Huffington has been accused of drinking the Obama kool-aid. With her leadership the Huffington Post has certainly assisted Obama in the inspiration department, but not for naught. On the eve of Super Tuesday she wrote about, “the importance of having someone in the Oval Office who can inspire us to tap into the better angels of our nature — who can stir people to expect more of themselves than they otherwise would.”

To catch the Obama train one need not rain on anyone else’s parade. To long for an Obama presidency is not to discredit the integrity of McCain or the intelligence of Hillary. To vote for Obama is not to vote against anyone. To believe in Obama is to believe in us. And I believe.