I've waited to write about Barack Obama because I wanted to let my feelings on the subject settle in, and I wanted to make sure that I could write something that meant something, that I could remember, something beyond the pure, intense elation that I felt on that Wednesday afternoon, here in Tokyo, when the United States of America elected a black man for President.
Barack Obama is more than his skin color. He is more than a racial stereotype or a broken barrier or a shattered glass ceiling. Simply put, the man is the most gifted politician that I have ever seen, and I say that having spent my entire adult life compulsively following politics.
First and foremost, President-elect Obama is an intellectual. His academic credentials are not only top-notch, they are the best of the the best. Simply put, Barack Obama is brilliant. I do not make that assertion out of a sense of idolatry or hero-worship...it's a fact. He has run the most disciplined political campaign that I've seen in my life, and it's not an accident. He did it because he, himself, is deeply disciplined and deeply analytical. He attended Ivy League institutions on scholarships. He was the president of the Harvard Law Review, one of the most distinguished legal journals in the country. Like Bill Clinton before him, if you should meet Barack Obama, you will know, for a fact, that you are standing with the smartest person in the room, or at least in the top 1 or 2 percent. THAT is who you want running your country, not someone you'd like to have a beer with (although I would), not somebody who could tell a dirty joke at a barbecue (although I'm sure he knows a few), but you WANT the guy who can sit down with other people, people who would normally also be considered the smartest persons in the room, and have him sift through their possibly conflicting opinions and decisively arrive at the best possible conclusion. Barack Obama is that person.
I don't expect to agree with every conclusion that he comes to. On the contrary, I expect to regularly disagree with him and the conclusions that he and his administration arrive at. However, I know that when President Obama and I disagree, it won't be because he hasn't considered my opinion or because he arrogantly refuses to consider the possibility that he might be wrong or the ramifications of his actions or inactions. This will not be another Bush administration.
Finally, this would be a very incomplete post if I did not describe my feelings about race in this election.
I cried on Wednesday night when I watched Obama's victory speech in Illinois. I was overcome by the knowledge that my country, the United States, had finally, after so many years, lived up to its previously unfulfilled credo, that all men, and women, are created equal in our intellectual potential and our human capacity to do good things on this planet, and by the fact that white and black and Latino and asian Americans had decided, together, that skin color was less important than ideas and talent and dedication. The inequalities inflicted on the black community over the course of the last 400 years by slavery and by Jim Crow and by subtle and not-so-subtle institutional and interpersonal racism have not been lifted. They remain, and will forever remain, a great stain on American history, one of our greatest sins. Racism will remain a horrible and virulently evil reality in communities all across our country. However, from this day forth, for the very first time, every black child in the United States of America will know that their potential is not limited by the color of their skin, but only by their imagination and capacity for self-improvement. That they could, if they work very hard and are very lucky, become the most powerful man or woman in the world. That is so incredibly beautiful, and I am so proud of my country for the first time in a very long time.
I love America. I love what it can stand for. At its best, it is so very, very good. At its worst, as we have learned over the last 8 years, it can be so very evil. And I have watched and read about evils committed by my country, on television and newspaper and internet, and have despaired for the loss of our great potential to fear and xenophobia and hate of other, different cultures. We reached a turning point in American history, a point where the America of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln became America as envisioned by authoritarian oppressors by the names of Dick Cheny, Alberto Gonzales, Donald Rumsfeld, David Addington, John Yoo, Paul Wolfowitz, and George Bush, Jr., who saw no problem with suspending habeas corpus, or with torturing potentially innocent suspects, or with illegally waging war against the innocent and the guilty alike, or with listening in on the private conversations of Americans. They are vile and disgusting human beings for what they have done to my country. There is no room for an intellectual debate with those who would be willing to torture other human beings in exchange for the illusion of security. There is no room for ANYTHING but the strongest possible condemnation. It is my fervent wish to see these men and women (Monica Goodling, I'm looking your way), and more, rot in prison for the crimes that they have committed against my country in the name of power, politics, and security. I will never forgive them for what they've done to the United States. It will take years to undo the damage that they have done, if it can be entirely undone.
Barack Obama's election is a repudiation of the fear-mongering and authoritarianism that these men stand for, and it is the greatest single step in healing our nation's racial divide since the Emancipation Proclamation. A new day has dawned in America, and my only regret is that I couldn't dance in the streets, in joy, with my countrymen.
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