Fresh from a once unforseen victory in Iowa, Illinois Senator Barack Obama will be campaigning in San Francisco today, hopefully bolstering support in the California primary on February 5th’s “Tsunami” Tuesday. Perhaps Californians will bring the noise if Obama brings his message of change(and maybe da funk) to the Golden State. To be fair, there are several significant primaries that the first term Senator must succeed in to successfully carry the momentum to Super Tuesday; New Hampshire and South Carolina in particular. But one thing that Obama’s victory in Iowa showed us was that voters are hungry for a rejection of the status quo. Alongside John Edwards, Obama represents everything that Washington is NOT. While Hillary Rodham Clinton personifies everything that is wrong with Washington: a defense of special interest groups, political positioning, and relentless ambition. Call me a pessimist, but I believe that Iowans, as well as the entire nation, are leaning towards change over “experience”. Experience is in the eye of the beholder, as the defeat of the more seasoned Democratic Second Tier of candidates (Richardson, Biden, Dodd) exemplified. America wants change, and it needs new leadership. Senator Obama has demonstrated that he understands the needs of working Americans, understands that American prestige around the world has hurt our standing as a world leader, and understands that the politics of cynicism is a vice that needs to be replaced by a new kind of politics: It is not a brand of politics that divides us, rather that unites us. It is not a brand of politics that upholds a broken system, but rather attempts to cleanse it.
It is also refreshing to see Republican candidates such as Mike Huckabee present a positive message without having to compromise their ideals. Huckabee, a man of strong religious convictions, is by far the only Republican that transcended the meaning of being “pro-life” when he said that pro-lifers should not be “confined to the womb”. Amen.
The Obama-Huckabee victories in Iowa may be viewed as a turning point in American politics. Unfortunately, the debate is not over. Not all polls are closed, and not all party members are satisfied. Tomorrow, a victory will be spun by an opposing campaign. Tomorrow, negative political ads will dominate the airwaves and the internet. Tomorrow, it will be politics as usual. How can we look to tomorrow when there is such an ugly sentimentality today?
Robert F. Kennedy said that the Gross National Product does not measure the passionate hearts, the intellectual progress, the health, and the “intelligence of the public debate” of the American people. A shame indeed, because THAT’S the America that I want to live in; it’s the country that we SHOULD have. All too often, we honor activities of ill repute, exonerate individuals who corrupt the minds of our children, redeem the greedy, defend the selfish, and champion the causes of the lost. Surely we can do better; only a “cleansing” of complete society, as RFK put it, would truly vindicate the soul of America. Unfortunately Americans are too complacent, too deaf, too arrogant, too riddled with fear, and too ignorant to recognize the cancer infecting the very fabric of the American Spirit: Apathy.
Will the “politics of Hope” help purify the drenched soul of the United States? Probably not. But it is a start. If more voters hunger for change over more of the same, then maybe we can start to help cure apathy. Maybe someone will wake us up for once, instead of letting the American Spirit stay in its apathetic and mislead comatose.
