Joe Biden said it. Hillary Clinton said it. And (I confess) Betsy Devine also thought it, back when the primaries were getting started. Who was this young guy with his groupy supporters, his visions of Red-and-Blue harmony? Wasn’t he just a naive dreamer who would quickly be crushed by Karl Rove and his cynical minions?
A supporter of John Edwards, I later trended toward Clinton, deeply annoyed by the Hillary-haters who found welcome instead of rebuke among Obama’s groupies.
But the big-eared guy with the funny name won me over. Making a long story short, he won me over completely, on March 18, with his “speech on race,” giving respect to divisive resentments, both black and white, even as he asserted his own call to unity.
What would it be like, I finally asked myself, to have a President who was thoughtful and empathetic and deeply intelligent. Somebody who stayed loyal to his big-mouthed pastor long after it would be expedient to have denounced him, but somebody who stuck up for what he himself believed in, even when what he believed was a complex reality, not poll-tested bullet points.
Predictably, McCain supporters will use people’s long-ago words to claim that Obama now is not ready to lead. I disagree, and so (I bet) do most of the people they’ll be deceptively quoting.
2 responses so far ↓
1 TA // Aug 26, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Quick, name another context where a 47 year old would be described as “this young guy”. ;)
2 Betsy Devine // Aug 26, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Just about any context where a 61-year-old is comparing him against a bunch of other people who are her own age or older!