I know that diaries like these are a dime a dozen, but I sincerely felt that another can't hurt. It is in times when campaigns take a hit, times when they stumble and falter, that the real mettle of a campaign, and a candidate, is shown.
*** Update -- I got a donation! I went ahead and matched it. I don't have the funds to match everyone, but I figured it was a good way to get the ball rolling. You can donate here as well. Thanks!!! ***
My reasons for supporting Barack Obama are both personal and political. Intellectually, there is no doubt in my mind that he is the superior candidate, but my support comes more from the heart, in a visceral way that I have not felt for a candidate before.
I teach history and government. I have been fascinated with history from a young age, a passion that comes from my father and grandfather and one that has stayed with me all of my life. Politics was a big part of my upbringing. My mother's family were all loyal Republicans, to the degree that my grandmother still has an autographed picture of George H.W. Bush hanging in her hallway, a thank you for her work raising money for his election campaign. My father was a staunch Democrat, as was his father. the family fights, although usually all in fun, taught me a lot. The most important thing that I learned, however, is that no matter how much my family members disagreed, they all agreed that the US was a unique and wonderful country, and that we were all blessed to be a part of it. Virtually every male member of my family has served in the military, on both sides of my family, and so the traditions and love of country that come with that were fed to me like mother's milk. Every July 4th, both my father's family and my mother's family cooked out and watched fireworks together, Democrats and Republicans no more -- just Americans who loved this country.
The past 16 years have, therefore, been hard for me to take.
It's not that I don't support certain policies over others, or feel that over all the Democratic party is better than the Republicans in terms of serving the interests of everyday Americans. But the tone of the campaigning, the degree of poisonous vitriol, has simply made me sick. Believe it or not, every once in a while a Republican does come up with a good idea, and there are a lot of wonderful decent people out there that vote red. Some of them * gasp * are even friends of mine. And so, when I heard Barack Obama's speech at the convention in 2004, it gave me pause. I wanted to find out more. So I read his books. I looked up every bit of information that I could find on the man. I listened to what he had to say ... and those stories from my childhood came back to me.
What was fascinating to me was the manner in which the more I listened to him, the less I heard Barack Obama and the more I heard the voices of America's past. I heard Washington warning against partisanship, Jefferson's inaugural address in which he tried to re-unite a bitterly divided country, Douglas calling for equality, and Lincoln renewing and recasting the vision of America as a nation. I heard Wilson talking about a different world, FDR telling a frightened nation they had nothing to fear, and Kennedy sounding the trumpet for a new generation to step forward and serve. I heard Martin Luther King talking about a future for his children, one that he didn't think he would live to see, but that I might be witnessing with my own two eyes. I heard Barbara Jordan, who my Dad wanted to run for President when I was a kid, quietly thundering in her special way about the power of the American Dream. It was as though Obama had dipped his hand into the history of this country and brought out the richness of our past and the best of our heritage and gave it some fresh air. He reminded me of everything good in this country.
You can imagine my aggravation, then, when I hear his followers referred to as cult like. I am a part of a cult, but Barack Obama is not my savior and he is not a messiah. The cult to which I belong knows no color, sex or faith, and it holds only one criterion to belong: that one love this country and what it stands for, deep in its soul. No matter how much Bush and his ilk try to shred the Constitution, regardless of how the corporate controlled media try to spin things, and whatever the fearmongers try to tell the citizens of this country, there will remain in all of us a residual memory of how great this country can be when we all stand together. I don't support Barack Obama because he makes me feel good -- I support him because he reminds me of what this country is supposed to look like and how great it really can be. It's not lost. I refuse to believe that we can't unite behind someone like that.
More to the point, I WILL NOT vote for someone who tells me that I need a reality check, or that I need to tamper down on hope, or that inspiration and vision are unimportant leadership qualities. Every time I go to Arlington National Cemetary, where some members of my family are buried, I am reminded of the awesome power of hope. Those brave men and women believed in this country, believed in it so much that they risked everything to defend it. Hope that the world and their nation could be better kept them going. Faith in the promises of freedom kept them going. Love for their families and their country kept them going. Those are things that no policy can create and no 6 point plan can duplicate.
It is the feeling of pride that I and millions of others feel every time that flag is raised, every time we stand together in the morning and say the pledge, and every time I look back on the special history this country has of righting its own wrongs. It is the ache that I and millions of others feel when we see flag-draped coffins unloading in the middle of the night. It is the disgust we feel when we see corporations ship jobs overseas and leave millions of our countrymen scrambling to put food on the table. It is the resolute commitment that every man, woman and child felt when our nation was attacked and for a brief shining moment we were together, ready to take on a new and grave responsibility. It is that commitment that Barack Obama taps into, and that is the chief reason I support him.
There is another reason that I support Obama, and that is a bit of a strange one. As a teacher, I have long held that true master teachers not only teach their students but learn from them as well. My students, for the first time in their entire lives, are paying attention to politics and getting involved in what's going on. Barack Obama has inspired them. Every day they want to talk about the campaign, or listen to one of his speeches, or watch a replay of one of the debates. If he is the nominee, the country will have a generation of young, active voters who are plugged into the process because they believe that they can affect it. If not, I worry that it will disillusion an entire generation of young voters and continue the politics that cynically use division to maintain control. We have a unique chance here, one that only comes along every so often, to truly change the entire nature of the American electorate. Chances like this one don't come very often. We must seize it.
To that end, I have started up a new donation page here. Let's all come together and help this guy get elected. I want some stories to tell my own children. I want to be able to tell them that statesmanship is not dead. That political heroism is not necessarily an oxymoron. And that there is still a lot to love about this country.