Politics

Matt and I stayed up to watch Obama’s speech last week. Again. This is the second week in a row now. I’m sure we’ll be watching next week, also, whether he wins Texas and Ohio or not. We’re both on board with him.

My mother doesn’t think he has enough experience in Washington yet to run for president. She obviously hasn’t listened to him talk. That’s his whole point. Washington doesn’t work anymore. He said last week that ‘Washington is where ideas go to die.’ I couldn’t agree more. The ‘old guard’ has made quite a mess of this over the past few decades. We’re still in a WWII mindset, Vietnam mindset. Women at home making babies mindset. Blacks should know their place mindset. This is not going to change until we change out the current group, the last of the WWII generation and their kids, the baby boomers (the ‘entitlement’ generation).

I was reading the article in Newsweek this week about Michelle Obama and started thinking about exactly what the difference is between what the Obamas are talking about and the way the media is spinning what is really going on here. All this talk about change, all the talk about McCain’s age and Hillary’s stigma, etc etc, isn’t what this is about at all. This is about the pre-civil rights generations moving aside in favor of the post-civil rights generations. It’s our turn. And this covers race, it covers gender, it covers gays/lesbians. Economics and jobs. Middle class and poor.

Michelle is asked in the article what she would do as first lady. She’s very vague, stating that she would need to see what resources were available to her and such. But she does say one thing that really stuck out to me: She is interested in issues women face balancing work and home.

How many first ladies have *ever* had this problem? The vast majority of them have been affluent enough that they never had to hold a job outside the home, and those that did usually quit as soon as they were married or pregnant.

Michelle has, and still does, work outside the home. The article goes on to state that ‘black women have never been burdened with the luxury of choice’ whether or not to work. They only recently came out of debt, when his book made the top of the best seller list. This is a person just like us, a family that was trying to make ends meet despite having good jobs and everything they are promised under the American Dream. This is a new generation, a new mindset for our government. How many rich old white male senators have ever faced the childcare issue? When was the last time we had a young family in the white house with young kids? Isn’t it time for something fresh?

I’ve been accused more than once that I don’t have any ambition. My mother has told me this before, about something stupid that happened in 3rd grade. Yes, I’m serious. Anyway, I have often been concerned about this, too, because it appears to me that I don’t have much ambition. Go back to school? Yeah, maybe someday. No real drive, though. Get a better job? Well, I don’t really like my current job, but it pays well and such, so no, no real drive there either. I just don’t see the point.

But get me in a situation where a group of people needs help and damn, I’m all over that. Which got me to thinking: personal ambition vs. group ambition. Look at that in terms of politics: most politicians throw out a lot of talk about helping groups of people: poor, homeless, women, people without health insurance, middle class, unions, all those poor sods who got sub prime mortgages. Has anything really changed in the last 20 years? 30 years? I mean, for the better? No, not really. It’s all talk. Most politicians are corporate people, too: they will help you only if it gets them money or power (or both). And the middle class really doesn’t have it to give. The poor certainly don’t. On the other hand, big oil and big pharmaceutical lobbies? Yeah, they have a lot of money and power to give. Who’s going to win every time with the people we currently have in DC?

So, enter Obama, who’s been promising change and such just like many before him, including Hillary. Why do I believe him over her? Well, the evidence backs it up: he was a community organizer in Chicago. He went to the sections where people had been laid off from steel mills and gave hope and listened, worked to make their situation better. He knows constitutional rights, because he taught constitutional law.

Hillary? She was on the Board of Wal-Mart at the same time Obama was working the streets in Chicago. I know this because one of my cousins took her seat on the Board when Bill was elected president. So, yeah, I think she’s going to give us the same old, same old. It will be big business as usual, just like we’ve got now.

I identify with his activism. He is walking the talk. I think he’s the only one who is.

The Obamas are dynamic about this change and it is infectious. We don’t need another WWII generational president. We don’t need a president that was so arrogant about her chances to get the nomination that she couldn’t even manage her campaign properly and ran out of money (how could she manage an entire country if she’s this short-sighted?) I really do believe he’s the right person in the right place at the right time, and for the right reasons.