I think today hope was restored in many around the world when Barack was elected. Not simply because he was black, although if you read his acceptance speech the significance of a black man ascending to the White House did not escape him:
This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that’s on my mind tonight’s about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She’s a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing: Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.
She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn’t vote for two reasons — because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin. And tonight, I think about all that she’s seen throughout her century in America — the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can’t, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can. At a time when women’s voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can. When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs, a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.
Yet above all that, he just represents a different kind of politics. Following his meteoric rise, from the keynote speech in Illinois that started it all, key speeches that shaped what we know of him – his “Call to Renewal“, an appeal to the religious right; his honest look at race relations in “A More Perfect Union“; the presidential debates, and of course the acceptance speech above that gave me shivers when listening to it – it simply seems to have been such a long time before we’ve seen such a politician.
Gracious as McCain’s concession speech may have been, it didn’t make up for the huge negativity and blatant lies told by his campaign – among the worst offenders being a campaign ad portraying Obama as the Anti-Christ, painting him as a terrorist attacks made 40 years ago.
Ridiculous as the accusations against Obama may sound, I had my fair share of friends and relatives who actually think he might be a secret Muslim or terrorist – I’m hoping I don’t hear any Anti-Christ references on Sunday.
It’ll be very hard for Obama to do as badly as Bush did, but I somehow just have the feeling that he’ll go beyond that, somehow. It’s change we can believe in :).
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Tags: 2008, obama, Politics, US Elections
