Between Barack and a Hard Place: Obama's Call to Action
Looking beyond hope in Election 2008
If I were to vote in the old style of identity politics, I would feel obliged to vote for Hillary Clinton. As a woman who could relate to her teary-eyed New Hampshire moment, a Latina in a city where the Clintons delivered a lot of political goodwill, and a journalist who isn't supposed to get caught up in emotion-driven movements, I should logically choose Clinton. She's paid her dues with her party, and her man; it's her turn to run. But last Saturday, as I listened to Obama deliver his victory speech in South Carolina, I knew that I would be voting for the senator from Illinois. And it wasn't just the prettiness of his words that persuaded me.
Behind his message of hope, Obama, throughout this campaign, has been speaking the language of an on-the-ground activist. "Yes, we can," he repeated again and again in Saturday's speech, mirroring the call of a thousand immigrant and labor marches: "Si, se puede."
Obama isn't just asking Americans to vote for him; he is asking that Americans help him lead. This means putting pressure on Congress and health care companies so that universal health care is politically possible, not just a good idea. This means demanding real proof, not ginned-up satellite pictures, before committing our troops to dangerous misadventures. Just as consumer demand for hybrid cars forced American automakers to begin producing cleaner-burning cars, so can voter demand force Congress to begin to make real changes in the way it operates. The thing is, many Americans want to do more than pull a lever and leave it to a politician to save the day.
"America is a great nation precisely because Americans have been willing to stand up when it was hard; to serve on stages both great and small; to rise above moments of great challenge and terrible trial," Obama said in December. "[After September 11] we had a chance to step into the currents of history. We were ready to answer a new call for our country. But the call never came. Instead, we were asked to go shopping, and to prove our patriotism by supporting a war in Iraq that should never have been authorized, and never been waged."
I understand that Barack Obama is a mere politician with flaws and potentially troubling conflicts of interest. He's not going to lead us to some imagined promised land of unity and unicorns. But of all the people running for the White House, he can put out a call for sacrifice and service and, unlike Jimmy Carter in his tragic cardigan sweater, get people to listen and to act. This is what Ted Kennedy and Caroline Kennedy picked up on when they endorsed Obama. And it is the real hope behind his candidacy.
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