Why Obama, Pt. 1: The Beginning of Something Long

I've been thinking through some of these things for months, and I wanted to voice them. If they spin out unheard into the void, I don't mind - some of this is just a chance for me to organize my thoughts. They need organizing, because I'm quite given to incoherent babbling when it comes to politics, and as I mentioned in my previous post, I'm going to try to avoid willfully subjecting my friends to this.

Essentially, my thought is this: whether you are a Republican, Democrat, liberal, centrist, or moderate conservative, I think the case for Obama can be made very compellingly. I'm going to take a crack at it. I don't think any solid conservatives will go for it, but I'd still like them to listen in anyway. While I don't plan to hide my views, I hope to state them in a way that avoids the simple habit of bashing the other party for kicks, slandering people, making unfair accusations, or making straw-men arguments from the opposing view. I respect the conservative Republican approach to things, and I respect people who maintain that approach. But let me tell you why I shifted away from it.

Introduction:
I’ve been vaguely interested in politics for much of my life. When I was younger, I believe my motivation was chiefly that the ability to talk politics seemed to make me sound smarter, more adult. I probably still hope it does these things, but this hope is entirely secondary to my growing fascination of the pure mechanics of it all. In the last two years, politics has become a hobby of mine that consumes a surprising amount of my time, as I spend hours combing through the New York Times, the BBC World News, and sites like www.politico.com.
I might as well tell you now that in 2004, I voted for Bush. I did not know Kerry very well, I didn’t like his voice, and he sounded very suspicious to me. I was not entirely sure that I liked Bush, but at the time I was more concerned that any Supreme Court openings be filled by more conservative judges. As it happened, two openings came up, and Bush appointed Roberts and Alito (aside from his rulings in favor of expanding executive powers, I think I like Roberts. I don’t really know about Alito yet.)
Around 2006, I began to grow very excited about the 2008 elections. Interesting things had been happening. John McCain had been finding his way into the press again, and I couldn’t imagine anyone else getting the Republican nomination in ’08 – which was great, because I loved McCain. I even got to see him speak in person, and he conveyed a message that deeply resonated with me: the needs of America ought to come above the petty squabbles between parties. This same year, Democrats had chased Sen. Joe Lieberman out of the Democratic Party because he wasn’t against the war – never mind the fact that he had always been a successful, popular, well-loved and well-respected senator. But he, too, rose above: he ran as an Independent, and won his seat back handily.
I began thinking that my dream ticket for 2008 would be McCain/Lieberman (when people actually began to consider this a possibility in recent weeks, nobody believed me when I tried to say I predicted it years ago. This may be why I’m writing my thoughts now, just in case I get the chance to say, years later, “I told you so.”) Both of these men were well-respected, ethically sound men who could – and frequently did – work together to get things done. McCain broke with his party to pursue responsible care for the environment, and Lieberman broke with his to support things like the troop surge in Iraq, among other things. These two men could change the world.
And then, early in 2007, I stopped to watch a little video online. A good-looking young black man with a name I wasn’t sure I could pronounce gave a forty-five minute speech in his church about how faith ought to interact with politics – providing a compelling contrast to our current president’s approach, which has deeply troubled me. I wasn’t ready to let go of McCain, but I had to hear more from this man. Just as I knew that McCain had to be the Republican nominee, I knew that this man had to be the Democratic.

First Things:
I hope there is nobody out there who still thinks Obama is a Muslim. He’s not. (Insert obligatory “Not that it would matter…” here). And I think most people have put the flag-pin incident behind them (although, in truth, he was making a very apropos comment on patriotism). His wife’s “finally proud of this country” statement was nothing more than a mis-phrased gaffe (if you want to hear a gaffe, you should hear some of the things McCain has called his wife in public), and I haven’t heard anybody say anything about Jeremiah Wright in a while. I find this comforting, but I also haven’t been hanging around the people who would say something about these things, and so I imagine these non-issues haven’t completely died for everybody. Particularly Wright. I considered writing full-fledged responses to these ridiculous items, but I find that I can’t bring myself to do so: these topics are just not worth it. None of the above-mentioned topics is in the least bit important. At all. Seriously. I’m open to discussing these if somebody else wants to get me worked up about them, but honestly, I’d rather discuss more interesting things, like tax policies and health care.