Today sirens were blaring outside my window as the local authorities were testing their emergency warning systems. This seemed an appropriate sountrack for the shameful vote in which the Democrats betrayed their oaths to defend the Constitution by voting for the FISA amendments. Leading this parade of clownish pols was my former candidate Barack Obama...
For the first time in my adult life, during the recent Democratic primary season, I was proud of my choice of candidate for President. My wife and I stood outside in the sleet of a February storm on the courthouse square in Olathe, Kansas to cast our votes on behalf of Barack Obama in our state caucus. We saw that we were supporting change and the belief that government can be put to good purposes. We began to perceive, on that dark, wet, and freezing night, that even in solidly Republican Kansas a new spirit of optimism was beginning to rise in our nation. After almost eight years of assaults on the country and its form of government by ignorant men and women the end of this shameful time was in sight.
As the campaign progressed, I watched with wonder as Barack Obama, my candidate, gracefully conducted a campaign of intelligence and integrity. Calmly, with reason and honesty, he pointed to another way of dealing with our very urgent problems. For the first time in my adult life I was seeing a candidate who did not pander, who did not prevaricate, who did not play all the old tired tricks of countless other campaigns. His opponents, both in his party, and in the opposition, only gave greater light to his striking difference by their attacks on his message. A long dormant hope began to rise in my heart.
I never saw Barack Obama as completely above politics. Indeed, I did not want him to be unskillful in his chosen profession or ignorant of the ways of the world. His hopeful words had already brought the charge of naiveté on his head. I thought, however, that I could glimpse the possibility that he might transcend, somehow, the otherwise dark and grimy reality of our current politics. Today, with Obama's, unprincipled and untranscendent support in the Senate for the amendments to FISA, with its complete betrayal of Constitutional principle, my sight has cleared. I don't regret my own brief vision of hope; I regret that it has been cast into darkness for what will probably be a very long time. I had never, in my adult life, been prouder of my support for a Presidential candidate. I wish I were still.