Reflections on the New President

Posted by ScuzzBuster

November 5, 2008

Throughout the evening, the election coverage would occasionally cut back between Phoenix, Arizona and Grant Park in Chicago where crowds gathered for both candidates.

After the call was finally made late Tuesday night and McCain gave his concession speech the camera panned over his disappointed crowd. My wife made the comment “look at that crowd.” That was the extent of her comment, but I knew exactly what she was referring to. I responded ”It’s white as a sheet.”

And so it was. That’s not a condemnation of the Republican Party as racist, but the lack of diversity is striking. In many ways it is the party of “old, white men.” Many of the people in McCain’s crowd were probably the same ones screaming out “terrorist” or “kill him” at the mention of Obama’s name at recent political rallies. The Republicans had become so confident and empowered from controlling the executive branch 20 of the last 28 years that the last few months must seem like a long nightmare that they are still trying to wake up from. Even during McCain’s gracious concession speech his crowds still would not take the high road as they booed and jeered spuriously throughout.

Back to the left for a moment. When they finally called California and Washington and the official projection of the Obama victory was made I began to get a bit choked up. For the first time in many years I actually had an glimmer of pride in my country. I would hope that even the most staunch of McCain supporters had in the midst of their disappointment at least some inkling of that same feeling of national pride. It’s a total rebuke of what conventional feeling is around that world that we are a backward, uneducated country that’s years behind in civil rights.

I firmly believed that the election of an African American president was something I would probably not see in my lifetime. And if I did, I was sure that it would be a Republican like Colin Powell that could reach across the racial barrier and take voters away from the Democratic party while still pulling conventional support from the firmly white conservative base of the right. I feel pretty good about being wrong today.

My prevalent disillusionment with the conservative movement is mainly the result of the intense and almost unconstitutional pandering to the religious right. This, along with media figures like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly the Republicans mindlessly allow to be the outspoken voices of the movement. There’s a bit of satisfaction involved with that, especially after Limbaugh espoused early in 2008 that Democratic party “didn’t have a chance” to win the presidency when the only two choices for them were “A woman and a black.” As embarrassed as many Republicans may be by the likes of Rush these days, he really is the “open” face of the party.

Of course we aren’t any further along than we were a week ago. Racism is still an issue in this country, but at the very least it’s a lot more hidden than it was 30 years ago. Going against the conventional punditry, I think part of this is actually due to the [groan] political correctness movement. Even for the real racists, it’s not really “cool” anymore to be one openly. In the 1970s when I was growing up in the midwest it seemed almost rampant.

Apart from getting to admit that I live in a country that isn’t nearly hung up on race as many people thought, I think there’s even a more important component to Obama’s decisive win than his race or affiliation with the Democratic Party. He’s the first President even somewhat close to the current younger and “youngish” generation. We have the Obama campaign utilizing the internet as a brilliant communication and fundraising tool running against a party who’s current leader is a 72 year-old man who admittedly has never used e-mail. We have the first post-baby boomer chief executive.

Obama is the first president of a generation that grasps the magnitude of the internet in our culture. We’ve never had a president that had any connection to the entire second culture of the electronic economy. Granted, at 47, Obama was already in his 30s when things started to heat up, but that’s still within what I consider “our” generation. With McCain I still can’t conceive of a man trying to manage our economy who’s never even sent an email before. There’s something just fundamentally wrong with that.

So, putting aside your political feelings today, whether your a “fiscal” conservative or however you identify yourself, look to the next four years as the first time that we really have a president that has a grasp of “our” generation as well as a supreme view of both sides of the racial equation and he understands constitutional law to boot.

Congratulations to the president-elect.

bookmark Technorati Del.icio.us StumbleUpon Digg Facebook Mixx Reddit