ONE BRIEF, SHINING MOMENT
This entry was posted on 2/3/2008 3:59 PM and is filed under uncategorized.
I'm a beat-up and battle-scarred politcal-junkie warhorse. I've been following politics and their impact on our country and our world since I was a teenager. When I was 16, I kept a journal, and in amongst all the boyfriend and dating talk, girlfriend chatter, parent-complaints, and school worries--I was writing to my teen self about the six-day Israeli war, LBJ and the Vietnam war, the Kennedy assassinations, and other powerful events of that time.
The year I was sixteen was 1968.
The events of that year shook me to the bone. Every night I would watch Walter Cronkite on the evening news and see the dead and dying in Vietnam, assassinations of our heroes, and inner-city riots taking place against the backdrop of violent cultural, social, and historical changes, culminating in the shameful spectacle that was the Democratic convention, when Chicago police in riot gear clubbed unarmed student protesters half to death and dragged them bleeding into vans while Mayor Daly preened.
Before leaving for college, I put together a scrapbook of high school photographs and memories, and on the front page of the scrapbook, I pasted the torn-off front cover of the end-of-year 1968 Life magazine, that featured a montage of persons and events from that tumultuous year. Front and center on that cover was a shaggy-haired youth defiantly shooting the finger at the camera--something unheard-of in that time--but that captured perfectly the rage and angst of that year.
Even though I was struggling to pay for my own education, the first thing I did when I moved into the freshman dorm was subscribe to two weekly newsmagazines: Time, and Life. In the spring of that year, another student protest on a quiet college campus at Kent State, had the tragic consequences of a panicked and inexperienced National Guard opening fire on the kids with live ammunition, killing four. It was devastating to college kids all over the country.
Imagine, if you are college-aged today, how that would feel, if innocent college kids your age, involved in a peaceful protest, were shot down by the American government on home soil. Or were dragged away by the hair at a political convention.
During the 1972 presidential campaign, a journalism teacher forced our class to attend a Nixon rally at Southern Methodist University. I staged a walk-out of the row of students on either side of me--or I would have, but Secret Service refused to allow anyone to leave the event while Nixon was speaking.
So we turned our backs to the stage and crossed our arms.
As soon as the 18-year old vote was passed, I cast my first vote, for George McGovern. By then I was already speaking out, in the campus literary magazine.
Though I fought for civil rights, I did not protest the Vietnam war--not openly. My father, brother, and future husband, as well as many good friends, fought in that war. I wanted to respect their sacrifice, but at the same time, I thought that the war-protesters were missing the point. As John Lennon sang, "You say you want a revolution? We-ell, you know...we'd all love to see the plan."
No one I knew who wanted to end the war seemed inclined to come up with any ideas on how to go about that. This did not mean, however, that I supported the war effort. I was just looking at it from both points of view.
Hindsight tells me that the protesters didn't care about ending the war, really. They just wanted to end the DRAFT.
My senior year, I had an apartment off-campus. I didn't watch TV but my roommate did. When she wasn't around, I kept the channel turned to the hearings on ending the Vietnam war, and I watched as the Paris peace agreement was signed that ended the American occupation.
When my children were young and Jesse Jackson ran for the Democratic presidential nomination on his "rainbow coalition," I had my kids come into the living room and watch his speech at the convention--not because he'd won the nomination--but because I told them this was a moment in history I wanted them to remember: a black man, running for president of the United States.
They hadn't seen what I'd seen growing up--firehoses and dogs turned on peaceful protesters; governors and troops barring school-house doors from black children. They didn't know that I'd gotten into a knock-down drag-out fight with my own father when, while I was in college, I took a Red Cross first-aid class that taught, among other things, mouth-to-mouth rescussitation.
He could not believe it when I told him I'd use it on a black person if necessary.
Through the years, I have witnessed rare and unparalleled moments in American history; moments that defy description anywhere else but the gut; unforgettable moments that unite a country over tragedy or inspiration, moments when--briefly, joyfully--we remember what it means to be an American.
Ladies and gentlemen--this is such a moment.
On Tuesday, Democrats in 22 states will be casting votes for the Democratic nominee for the presidency of the United States. We have before us two highly qualified candidates, both of whom would make good, maybe even outstanding presidents.
But this is not a moment like any other nominating moment. This is a moment that trembles on the precipice of history. A nation demoralized and devastated on the 11th of September, 2001, bruised and battered over five long heartbreaking years of war, browbeaten by a fearmongering president and his administration for almost eight years, worn out by economic and energy challenges...a nation hungering for someone, somewhere--not necessarily to GOVERN, and hand down presidential decrees--but to LEAD, to inspire to greatness, to challenge us to be our best selves, to shine a light into the darkness of a world in turmoil as only America can do.
I have been following American history and politics for forty years.
That's a long time.
I have learned how to spot these moments when they present themselves.
And I have learned that, once these moments are lost...they never come again.
Consider, if you will, the candidacy of John Edwards. You may recall how, in 2004, he was the spunky upstart, the inspiring candidate. But the political machine threw its weight behind John Kerry, who was considered to be more experienced and a better potential president.
We all know how that turned out.
Four years later, Edwards ran again, trying valiantly to recapture what he'd lost...but that moment was gone. Though he ran a feisty, hard-fought campaign filled with the poignancy of his family's griefs...it was too late. His moment was gone.
This moment, right now, is even much more charged, more electric with promise than any before that I have seen since the demoralized and devastating year of 1968. Our nation hungers even more now, I think, for someone to energize us and inspire us and mobilize us to create a movement for change.
There is only one candidate on our roster who has that ability--only one candidate in EITHER PARTY--to do that.
And that candidate is Senator Barack Obama.
I beg of you--all you undecideds out there, all you moderate and disgruntled Republicans, all you Independents, all you Democrats tormented by the choices before us--cast your vote, in this moment, at this time, for Obama.
I am telling you--I am BEGGING you--as a serious student of American political history--this moment is now, and this moment will never come again. If we pass on it, thinking, as we did in 2004, that "experience" will be more important, we will be making a tragic mistake for many reasons.
For one thing, Sen. John McCain, who will probably get the Republican nomination, has years and years more experience than Hillary Clinton, and he did not get it vicariously, through a spouse. So that argument will only be used against her in a national election and take all the steam out of her campaign theme.
For another, hardworking and talented though she is, there is absolutely nothing inspiring about Hillary Clinton. The only thing she inspires is hatred from the wingnuts in both parties who will pour out in force to defeat her, thus dividing the country even worse than it already is. I'm not saying this is her fault; it just is.
Political junkies pride themselves on making informed ballot-box decisions, weighing them with reason and logic. But the truth is that the vast overwhelming majority of American voters only pay attention sporadically, if that. They don't read the papers or political websites. They barely catch the evening news now and then.
They make their votes EMOTIONALLY--either viscerally, against a candidate they don't like or don't trust--or inspirationally, FOR a candidate who makes them feel good about themselves and the country's future. It may drive the rest of us crazy, but this is the way it is.
And if this country has to choose between Hillary Clinton (and Bill) who they may have trouble trusting or just don't like--or a war-hero "straight-talker" "Maverick" like John McCain, I guarantee you, they'll vote for the good guy, not matter how poor his policies or how old he is.
If we as Democrats pass on this opportunity to put in front of the country a youthful man of vision and powerful rhetorical gifts who is capable of uniting the whole country--red and blue--behind an IDEA of what America is...if we pass on this opportunity so that we may, as Obama joked, "make a bridge to the 20th century"...if we go backwards toward our own comfort rather than forwards for new ideas and a powerful new image to the world at large...we will not only have missed this moment (he, like Edwards, would not get another chance)--but we will put ourselves through yet another EXCRUCIATING, razor-sharp election that will give us YET AGAIN, another heartbreaking LOSS...by a mere fraction of a percentage point.
And we will put back in the White House a conservative who will continue Bush's disastrous wars, appoint right-wingers to the Supreme Court who will mandate our laws for an entire generation, make permanent Bush's miserable rich-man tax cuts, and end--maybe forever--the ideals of a Democratic party of populism, tolerance, inclusion, and peace.
If you are not solidly in the Hillary camp, but are wavering, I urge you, with all my heart, to step up to this moment in history and take part in it.
Use the ballot box to put forth a New America, one of hope and vision and energy and peace, one we can be proud of. It will be a vote you will never forget.
And on Inauguration Day, I guarantee, you will not regret it.
