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Mokelumne Hill, CA — One small step at a time

We matter.

Posted on | January 20, 2009 | Eric Peterson |

What’s so different about Obama? What did he do that overcame his huge lack of name recognition, his paucity of landmark legislation, and his comparative inexperience with the rusted steel factory known as Washington, DC, and caused his election to the Presidency?

There are a lot of somewhat technical things. Yes, he understood the technology available to him, and mastered it in a fashion not seen since Goldwater took the Republican party by storm in 1964. Yes, he had a masterful strategy, especially in the general election; he marshalled his superior resources and deployed them such that John McCain had to fight in states he might have otherwise expected to win easily (North Carolina, Nevada and Missouri, not to mention Florida, come to mind). And yes, he isn’t 71.

Our support for Obama came early on: he is literate, he is well-spoken, he is intelligent, he has a sense of history and context, and he questions every assumption. He passes the ball, plays defense, and can nail a three-pointer when the game is on the line. What more could one want in a President?

There was a lot of blather about his not having enough “experience” to be the President — which was hogwash in the 1800s and is hogwash now. There is NO job anywhere that prepares one for being the President — including having a father who was one.

The experience of once-every-year-and-a-half hour-long conversations with the head of state of Germany or Israel or Mexico does not prepare someone to decide to ask men and women to die in Afghanistan or Iraq.

The experience of being a Senator or Governor does not prepare one to tell the US federal bureaucracy that some of it has to go in order to reduce an out-of-control deficit — and it certainly doesn’t prepare one to face the wrath of some Congressman or Senator whose support one needs that his or her favorite government program is about to get red-lined out of the next budget.

The experience of shaking hands with factory workers and seeing how they operate their machinery does not prepare one for making the decision that because their corporate bosses made some bad decisions next month they’ll all be looking for work and by the way, that 401(k) isn’t worth much more than the paper the statement is printed on.

All the experience in the world doesn’t mean a damn thing if you don’t, can’t or won’t listen. When it gets down to it, that’s why Obama won: He paid attention.

That was most evident in the debates; when Mr McCain was speaking, Obama was intent on every word. When Obama was speaking, McCain was consulting his notes. There’s a novel idea; if you want to steal your opponent’s thunder, start by listening to what he says. If you say it before he does, there’s a good chance he’s going to be seen as saying “me, too” if he can say anything at all.

Obama, when he does speak, inspires and compels, not by blaming — but by insisting that problems can be solved. There are lots of great speechwriters out there — but Obama’s words are his, in the same way John Kennedy owned the words of Theodore Sorenson. The words are what Obama believes: “And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.”

What’s curious isn’t so much that, on the eve of Obama’s inauguration, 84 per cent of the country thinks Obama has prepared for the transition to power well, but rather that there is 16 per cent of the country that doesn’t think so. We know there are the Luddites out there who cannot imagine a Democrat of any kind — let alone a bi-racial one — who can possibly command the authority and respect that George W. Bush does. Huh? My friend Shawn thinks it has to do with either prolonged proximity to crude oil vapors or a belief that the only people you can trust are the ones who have received eight figure severance packages to please find some other company to ruin. They say you can’t fix stupid, venal or the BCS.

People need to feel like someone, somewhere is paying attention — and Obama has made us feel that way. For the past eight years, the President hasn’t been paying attention; his own agenda (actually, the Vice President’s agenda) was more important to him than the country’s, and we are all suffering the consequences. Indeed, Bush’s popularity is the lowest of any exiting President since polling data has been published, hasn’t topped 30 per cent in 18 months, and hasn’t been above 50 per cent in his second term. The most charitable thing that can be said about the Bush Presidency: we survived, we think. No wonder we all feel like we’re on the verge of a depression.

The next step begins in a few hours; the next few years will tell us just how bad the damage to our national psyche is. It is unfortunate that Obama’s turn at the head of the class will be marked by how much success he has at cleaning up the mess, or rather, convincing us that we can clean it up. But it’s not enough that we are successful; it’s that in the redesign and rebuilding of this country that our voices be heard. To Obama, we all matter.

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