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Now That He’s Won …
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Barack Obama won. And the hard work will start January 20, 2009. And the fate of the planet rests on the hopes of a nation.
“It is a revolutionary world we live in, and this generation at home and around the world has had thrust upon it a greater burden of responsibility than any generation that has ever lived. Some believe there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world’s ills. Yet many of the world’s great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation; a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth; a young woman reclaimed the territory of France; and it was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and the 32 year-old Thomas Jefferson who [pro]claimed that “all men are created equal.”
These men moved the world, and so can we all. Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. *It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped.* Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
These words were spoken by Teddy Kennedy about his late brother, Bobby. On occasion, I listen to those words and marvel at the impact a single man can have on the psyche of an entire world. It is true, few will ever have the greatness to bend history itself, but today we stand at the crossroads of history. Senator Barack Obama has tapped into the nihilism and seeming vapidity of the last 20 years and began a movement–one which transcends race, age, creed, class, or political affiliation.
The Civil Rights movement was rife with strife, and with it came a violent move left, in regards to social policy. LBJ’s Great Society program drew a critical backlash from conservatives, beginning a rightward capped off by the victories of Nixon and Reagan, pushing for smaller government, less regulation and a society of individualism–as if the “Me Decade” has never ended.
Senator Obama’s compact with voters is that the size of government does not matter, but that government should be effective, work for the people, and be pragmatic, in both its ways and means.
For over two decades, he’s subscribed to that old, discredited Republican philosophy – give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is – you’re on your own. Out of work? Tough luck. No health care? The market will fix it. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps – even if you don’t have boots. You’re on your own.
Well it’s time for them to own their failure. It’s time for us to change America.
You see, we Democrats have a very different measure of what constitutes progress in this country.
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We measure the strength of our economy not by the number of billionaires we have or the profits of the Fortune 500, but by whether someone with a good idea can take a risk and start a new business, or whether the waitress who lives on tips can take a day off to look after a sick kid without losing her job – an economy that honors the dignity of work.
And now that he’s won, it will not bode well if he lets down his constituency. The hopes of millions of voters lie squarely in his hands. And should he not live up to most of his hype, one can reasonably expect major steps backwards for race relations, a working majority in America, and a level of apathy and antipathy towards the political process rarely before seen.
America is a raw bundle of nervous energy right now–excitement and fear exist on both sides of the political spectrum. Never in recent memory has an election been so alive and, dare I say it, hopeful. But the promises of well managed, inclusive, open government will ease any hesitancy towards him. Whether this requires large scale New Deal-like programs or simply creating a veneer of transparency that exists within an Obama White House, I can not be sure. But one thing is certain; President-Elect Obama will have seemingly insurmountable problems to tend to, with nearly 6 billion eyes on his every move.
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