The Darkest Hour is Always Before Dawn

With election day around the corner, and all Hallows Eve behind us, the campaign is done. What arguments have been made are already in the minds of most voters. We can only pray, if one is so inclined to invoke a power beyond one’s own constitutional right to vote, that Barack Obama becomes the 44th President of the United States. Should Obama win, and I’m beginning to feel he might capture the Presidency by a much larger margin than anticipated, the nation can breathe a collective sigh of relief. For 8 years, we’ve had to carry the psychic burden of George W. Bush leading our nation.
George Bush, the cowboy buffoon, lampooned in all of Europe, vilified by the left, now unpopular with the right, has done more damage through his extreme ideology than any president in modern history. There have been Presidents before W. , like Millard Fillmore, who went down in history as utterly ineffectual – mere figureheads in an office they never should have aspired to. But W., in his firm belief that Jesus has guided every decision he’s ever made, coupled with the “Bush Doctrine” of preemptive war against perceived threats to the U.S., has given us a frightening political landscape. Bush II gave us Abu Gharaib, extradordinary rendition, Justices Roberts and Alito in the Supreme Court, the protracted Iraq war at 10 billion dollars a month, domestic wiretapping and the department of Homeland Security - the latter accompanied by color coded alerts designed to instill fear and compliance in the populace in a most Orwellian way. He gave us Dick Cheney, the Machiavellian dark lord, who directed the President in an ideological war against Islam , the U.N., the world court and our allies.“If you’re not with us, you’re against us” Bush declared after 9/11.
Not only did Bush squander all of his political capital in the years since 9/11, but he has also driven the U.S. into trillions of dollars of debt – debt owned by China and other foreign investors. He outsourced our economy and our global goodwill. In fairness, the disastrous domino effect toppling the world economic system cannot be blamed wholly on Bush. He relied on economic guru Greenspan to guide us through the miraculous mechanism of free market economics. We can go back a few centuries to Adam Smith’s theory of the “invisible hand”, in which he believed that those who pursued their self-interest would benefit the whole society, to see the roots of western exploitation of foreign resources, empire building, slavery and the industrial revolution in order to understand how greed came to be the modus operandi of the most powerful country in the world. Poor Alan Greenspan: the wizard of the Clinton and Bush administrations had to lay his soul bare in front of Congress last week and declare that for 40 years all that he believed in was for naught.
On the campaign trail, McCain and henchwoman Palin have tried to attach many pejoratives to Obama including “socialist.” How did redistribution of wealth become a dirty word? Is Obama really a post-modern Robin Hood who wants to steal wealth from the rich and give it all to the poor? It’s a weak argument, because Obama’s plan does not change America’s basic capitalist system. It’s modeled on F.D.R.’s new deal reconstructionist vision of America in which we the people can participate fully in rebuilding our country. It’s the antithesis of the Bush years in which our government, under the guise of democracy, was nothing but autocratic. In 2006, when the Democrats gained control of Congress, Nancy Pelosi refused to initiate impeachment proceedings against Bush, fearing an increase of the already bitter partisan divide in America. Perhaps she was correct, because deposing Bush would have brought Cheney into the forefront like the Wizard of Oz. And Dick as President would have sought revenge in a big way against the Democrats.
Now, with 72 hours until Election Day, I firmly believe Obama will be elected President. Unlike the 2000 and 2004 elections, we have a candidate with a remarkably organized campaign with unlimited funds and an electorate hungry for real change. Colin Powell called Barack Obama a “transformative figure.” Gore lost the election (even though he really won it) because he had no charisma: unfortunately, he found his fire a few years too late in his caustic speeches against the Iraq war and Bush administration policy. Kerry lost in ’04 because he was too aloof. The Republican war machine did a fantastic job portraying him as a member of the East Coast elite establishment. Then the swift boat veterans finished the dirty work. The smear campaign against Obama is far less effective. The McCain campaign’s attempt to link him with Bill Ayers is too remote to gain traction except with the Joe six packs who will not vote for Obama based on race alone. They really want Palin in office so they can poster their walls with images of the first hottie president in history riding a snowmobile or gunning down a moose. In the campaign, McCain has continued to re-invent himself, stealing Obama’s theme of “Change” and relying on an anti-Washington maverick platform. Obama has offered real substantive plans for rebuilding a broken America, while McCain has relied on negative campaigning. Obama has the unique power to unite crowds of 100,000 people and instill a sense of hope, while McCain stands with his forced smile and old broken body in front of crowds saying, “I know how to take care of veterans, I know how to fix the economy, I know how to solve our energy crisis.” But he really doesn’t have a solid plan. All we know is that he’ll veto pork barrel spending – a very small part of the annual budget.
As Colin Powell so correctly stated, it’s the judgment that a candidate brings to the office of the presidency that matters more than his experience. Obama’s calm, thoughtful demeanor and intellectual acumen are the qualities I want in a President. His 6-7% national lead in the polls is cause for optimism. The undecided voter population is nearly equal to that lead. The real unknowns are the race card and what I call the Lazarus factor for McCain. Will socially conservative voters choose against a black man when it comes time to push the button for Obama? This election could come down to a referendum on how evolved we are as a culture in our racial views and the archetype of the “Great White Father” that we’ve inherited from the Jeffersonian epoch. Then there’s McCain’s tendency to resurrect himself from the grave, as he did in the Republican primaries. A man who survived 5 years of mental and physical torture, McCain has tremendous resilience. If McCain is Lazarus, then “Jesus”, in the form of millions of evangelical Christians, could usher him into office as they did Bush II. But McCain’s lack of reverence, his curmudgeonly personality and once permissive stance in regard to abortion do not make him as appealing to that religious base. Palin was supposed to be the one to cement the Jesus factor, but as the common man sees her inability to recite even the most basic facts of history, foreign policy and doctrine, her popularity has fallen. To think of November 4th as a McCain victory, is to give up hope on the American dream. Obama, derided by the Republicans as messianic, is the one who can deliver a vision of a renewed America to the people.

America the Beautiful: Divided

The bellicose Republican war machine has been in power far too long. This morning, in a great act of defiance, I plowed down a “McCain/Palin” sign on a rural road with my mountain bike outside of Boulder. But then my conscience began to eat at me: I violated their first amendment right to freedom of expression and turned back to fix the sign. In the United States, we have the constitutional right to vote for anyone we please. I thought of the people at the Palin and McCain rallies yesterday who yelled “Kill Him” when the Republican candidates asked “Who is Barack Obama?” Although my act had no intent to do bodily harm,I was participating in the politics of division that both candidates have derided in their campaign, even though the attacks by the candidates upon one another have increased in past weeks.

The political climate in the U.S. in the past decade has been more divisive than in past generations. Never in my lifetime has there been such rancor between the two main parties in America. Major crises like 9/11, Hurricane Katrina and the recent economic collapse have the effect of temporarily uniting a divided congress and quelling partisan rancor. When the twin towers collapsed, Americans experienced a national unity for the first time in a generation - perhaps since the massive economic and military zeitgeist of WWII when every American was enlisted in the war effort at home and abroad. Today, it is tempting to assign the blame for the economic failures, the cracks in our physical and educational infrastructure, the war in Iraq and America’s poor image in the eyes of the rest of the globe on the Republican juggernaut. Under the misguided leadership of George W. Bush, America’s credibility in the world and at home has been destroyed. But Democrats have been complicit, either through lack of unified vision, ideology and political will, in creating the America we have now.

The roots of our imminent demise can be traced to the doctrine of American Exceptionalism, espoused by both parties since the first colonists arrived in Plymouth. We are supposed to be the “Shining City on the Hill” as both pilgrim John Winthrop and President Ronald Reagan declared. We were divined by God to carry the torch of liberty, freedom and democracy to the rest of the world. Our historical record on that front has been a strange amalgam of pluralism, technological innovation, democratic solidarity, humanitarian generosity through intervention and aid versus an abysmal tendency to wage genocide against our native peoples, prop up dictators who protect American interests, wage wars for geopolitical control of natural resources, and the creation of economic policies like NAFTA that only benefit the United States. We are at once a great example of democracy and wealth in a nation that prides itself on personal freedom and entrepreneurship and a despotic force of greed, bent on destroying any nation or group that would stand in the way of American self-interest.

In 21^st century America, millions of fundamentalist Christians, who formed a powerful electoral base for George Bush, believe that the United Nations is the arm of satan and that we must bomb the entire muslim population out of existence. And should America be destroyed in the process, they will be raised up on a ray of heavenly light and experience the “Rapture” of eternal life. And this is God’s will. In this election, the Palin obsessed “Joe six-packs” are hoisting their beers in celebration of an ethos that condemns the elitist Washington insiders and anyone who might reside in the urban east coast corridor. Those who reside in small towns have been lionized as the keepers of the flame, whose conservative political and religious values will uphold the American dream. A line has been drawn in the sand between the supposed intelligentsia and the god-fearing comman man. If we were to heed Jesus’ words, “A house divided against itself will fall.” In a divided America, those morally infatuated with the Palin doctrine will have plenty of room to roam in an Alaska that may want to secede from the union anyway. But the truth is closer to the fact that we all have basic needs in common: we want security, jobs, houses we can afford, reasonable heath care, and a government that provides basic services. This essential fact unites the vast majority of Americans. We don’t really want such different things. The war mongering Bushites have convinced Americans that our survival depends on destroying those who threaten our vital interests: namely muslims. Those who have been hypnotized by this rhetoric into believing the “dangerous world” theory will most likely vote Republican, but last time I checked our current President has one of the lowest approval ratings in history: 29%. There must be something else that most Americans want.

Today, we are reaping the effects of free-market policies that have enabled Wall Street and mortgage brokers to become grossly rich at the expense of the middle class while the poor suffer the indignities the poor have always endured as exposed by the abandonment of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast during Katrina. Crises provide ripe opportunities for introspection (an unthinkable thing for our current president) and transformation. As conservative pundits and politicians decry the bailout package as a socialist solution, it is perhaps of harbinger of a necessary paradigm shift in the way business is done in America. We need to pull our resources from foreign entanglements, stop pissing off the Islamic world by threatening to bomb more Middle Eastern countries, and reinvest our energies and economic resources at home. Even Obama, wishing not to appear too dovish for fear of losing the large part of the electorate that believes our survival depends upon destroying Islamic extremists, vowed to hunt down and kill bin Laden. If we would just stop waging war in oil rich countries and withdraw our troops, the Jihadis would lose momentum and the cries for “Death to America” would subside. Instead, we fan the flames of insurgency by our military interventions in the Middle East. Bin Laden stated this clearly in a videotape a couple of years ago that the “infidels” would have to withdraw from Iraq to avoid the wrath of al-qaeda. It wasn’t exactly an olive branch, but it was a clear statement of intent: “back-off or we will kill you.”

America desperately needs an epoch of multilateralism in which we cooperate with our allies in keeping agreements forged in a renewed United Nations and negotiate with our enemies as Obama suggests. God forbid we engage in diplomacy according to Sarah Palin, who would be overjoyed to push the red button at any given moment to obliterate Iran while her stylist primps up her “presidential” hair bun. This is the point at which I step firmly on the left side of the divide: what the Republicans stand for in this election, can only debase America’s standing in the world and further drive us into economic ruin. McCain’s cluelessness about economic matters and rote repetition of the party line of giving big businesses tax breaks, and Palin’s foreign policy experience amounting to her ability to see an isolated bunch of rocks in Siberia from an island she’s never visited in Alaska, add up to a synergistic disaster. McCain brags about his ability to work across party lines, but his campaign has been bitterly partisan.

After two years of questioning whether Obama is all rhetoric or for real, I’ve decided that his intention is pure: I believe he holds the best interest of the United States in his heart and that he is not in politics for the love of power. He has the potential to transform the American landscape as the representative of the most powerful office in the world. As Lord Acton said in 1887, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." When thinking of great men, like Abe Lincoln (a Republican), Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi, all of whom had significant personal flaws, I believe Barack Obama has the visionary intelligence and purity of heart to be a truly great leader and use power for good. If he can be protected from the very real physical threat of those who declare their intent to annihilate him, and if as president he can steer our nation out of its cynicism and the catastrophic political failures of the past 8 years, we could indeed be a shining beacon to a world that not long ago held the United States in high esteem.

The First Presidential Debate

John McCain is a fighter. The craggy, crusty McCain drove home the point that he’s been to most of the countries and knows most of the leaders addressed in the debate. But then he choked on he pronunciation of “Ahmadenijad.” He insisted on finally calling him, “Akmadenijad” but there’s no “K” in the name. It doesn’t matter – Americans don’t expect anyone to pronounce foreign names correctly, like the confounding Medvedev. McCain was sharper than I expected, delivering effective rhetoric concerning his own credentials. And he was believable and credible. It’s just that his policies are in-credible. Smarter, more original and unpredictable than Bush, McCain would ensure that “Team America” continues to punish the Axis of Evil countries while bin Laden runs amok near Tora Bora. McCain, predatory instincts on display, attempted to diminish Obama with repeated accusations that the Illinois Senator “just didn’t understand” or have the requisite experience to run the country. Barack was on the defensive, and often initiated his replies with stutter starts. His barely detectable oratorical shakiness aside, Obama held his own with every question. Not only was Barack more affable, gracious, intellectually acute and in touch than McCain, he also shot back with cogent replies. But Obama missed several opportunities to assert his position. In the case of Pakistan, McCain distorted Obama’s words by saying that Barack wanted to “attack” the country. In fact, Obama only stated that he would allow missions into Pakistan to root out terrorists. Obama also could have stated more strongly his position on Iraq, although the quote of the night was attributed to him when he told McCain that the Iraq war began in 2003, not 2007 when the surge was initiated. McCain tried to spin the surge into a great success story, while Obama cited the 4,000 U.S. soldiers killed and 30,000 maimed. But no one mentioned the fact that as a result of the U.S. invasion, Iraq’s infrastructure was devastated and millions of people fled the country or became internally displaced refugees.

Regarding the economic disaster, neither candidate provided any enlightening information. They both stuck to their talking points on fiscal matters: McCain will cut spending as he always has in the Senate and give tax breaks for corporations; Obama will cut taxes for 95% of the American population and tax the hell out of corporate America. But as for the near collapse of the U.S. credit system and the sub-prime loan disaster? Well, it would take an Allan Greenspan to give a 4 hour lecture on economics to scratch the surface of the problem. In a 90 minute debate about Foreign Policy, neither candidate was prepared to touch the real subject matter. McCain tried to paint himself in the image of Reagan. Reagan’s trickle down economics created increasing disparities between social classes and had devastated consequences in third-world countries. But then, perhaps McCain really does need another few houses and flamboyant dresses for Cindy while maintaining tax loopholes for himself.

On an emotional level, McCain showed a bit more passion. Obama, cool and collected as always, was to the point and likeable. I also thought Obama appeared more hawkish than he really is. By nature, Barack is a mediator, a diplomat. That’s why I love the guy as my candidate. But he cannot appear weak or dovish in comparison to McCain. He has to say that he’s willing to use America’s military force to protect our interests.

McCain’s tempered aggression, clenched teeth and sharpness could be perceived as more compelling for Americans still convinced by the Republican war machine that we live in a “dangerous” world and need a decisive, experienced WASP male in the White House. These two men could not be more different: the wizened prisoner of war who chose to dedicate his life to serving his country versus the young, professorial black man who inspires millions with his message of change and purity of heart. Obama is at his best in front of massive crowds; McCain in small town hall settings. Neither candidate stole the show in the debate.

Next week’s Palin/Biden face-off will be much more revealing. If Biden can stay on track and not put his foot in his mouth, Palin can be left to embarrass her party and herself in the national spotlight. At first a shot in the arm for the Republicans with her unusual folksy small-town charm and physical appeal, her utter lack of foreign policy knowledge (She can see Russia from Alaska) and penchant for sticking to her own lies will undermine McCain’s Presidential bid. The idea that Palin could become President if something should happen to incapacitate the aging McCain, is abhorrent to anyone who seriously examines her lack of qualification for the job. The future two Presidential debates may be more revealing. If McCain gets riled up and shows what a surly bastard he really can be, Obama will shine in comparison. It is unlikely that Barack will make any glaring mistakes, but given the opportunity, McCain could blow up like an IED. Now that would be fun.

The Adventure Writer's Holy Grail

To be published in Outside magazine is the freelance adventure writer’s Holy Grail.
In 2001, I sent the magazine a query about a 100 mile ultramarathon I had just completed in the Himalayas. I knew it was a long shot, but since I’d just had an essay published in the New York Times about 9/11, and scored a free trip courtesy of the Indian Government to write about eco-tourism in the Himalayas, I thought my writing career was getting hot. Six months later, an envelope that appeared to have suffered a journey through a gauntlet of postal machines and grimy ink stained hands arrived at my post office box in Jamestown, Colorado. The letter read to the effect, “At this time, Outside generally solicits feature articles from established writers and does not have a need for your piece, but please feel free to submit queries in the future.”

Seven years later at a travel writing conference in Boulder, I sit in front of Chris Keyes, editor of Outside for a ten minute session. I had already swilled a beer with him the night before at an informal gathering of writers and photographers, hoping to make inroads in establishing the coveted writer/editor relationship. Chris elicits a Clark Kent persona: a rock solid, mild-mannered man with thick lenses in his wire framed glasses. Beneath his friendly demeanor, I sense the quiet power and steely resolve that got him to the top of the editorial game. Chris got to the top by starting at the bottom. His first application to be an editorial intern at Outside was rejected, so he cut his teeth working at smaller publications until after a couple of years of experience, he got the internship. I didn’t ask if he had to go out to get coffee for the staff, but he did what he had to in order to achieve his meteoric rise through the organization.
Chris looked right at me and said, “you know, as a writer you have to be willing to do things you really don’t want to do.” This would entail sending Outside editor Grayson Schaeffer endless queries for the “News from the Field” section. In the rare case that he would take notice of me after a dozen or so queries, he might be so kind as to assign me a 50 word piece about a bungee jumping conference in New Zealand or an upcoming round the world balloon attempt by some Steve Fossett wannabe. As I sat in front of Outside’s superman, I secretly hoped he would like me enough to allow a crack in his editor’s armor. Perhaps he’d be taken by my unusual wit and irreverence and blurt out, in an end-of-conference magnanimous gesture, a solicitation for a major piece ala Symmes, Jenkins, Cahill or Krakauer.

In my lackluster pursuit of the adventure writer’s Holy Grail, I now realize that my little successes in 2001 were purely a stroke of luck facilitated through family connections in New York. The truth hurts: I'm the laziest freelance writer I've ever met. While I don’t want to be a 40-something coffee boy, it looks like I’ll need to scrub the metaphorical literary floors for a while to have a shot at the top.

But maybe, just maybe, there’s another way. What if I hired some strippers in Santa Fe to rappel off the roof of Outside’s office building holding a placard with my contact information marked in bold letters right in front of Chris’ window? The man of steel can’t be that impervious can he? For now, I’m working up my courage to send another query to Outside after a seven year recovery period. At this rate, figuring I live another 47 years, I’ve got at least another chance for six more rejection letters.

McCain sends Pitbull into the Arena

A convincing orator, Palin blew away a crowd waiting to fall in love with her. McPain’s new babe didn’t quite let down her hair, but she delivered her speech with such a thoroughly unshakeable belief in herself that this hopeful democrat felt the pain. (a half hour with the Colbert Report afterwards took away the sting) Proffering her family in front of the world, this small town Hockey mom cum V.P. hopeful showed the world how a bimbo with a shotgun could potentially become President. Now, that's my idea of the American Dream. As she shot arrows into Obama’s lack of policy creation with her backcountry crossbow, her mouth crinkled into a slight bulldog like snarl several times during the speech.

I look forward to the Veep debates when she’ll be biting at Biden's heels, but treading icy waters when he takes her apart on foreign policy. Of course as the Governor of a state that wants to secede from the union, there is another possibility: imagine pumping all that oil revenue into building “a bridge to somewhere.” When the chants of “Drill baby Drill” fade into the northern lights, all those unemployed oil riggers can jump into backhoes and fill in the Bering Strait. After all, tens of thousands of years ago there was a land bridge that permitted Mongolians to cross into the Americas. Now its time to reverse an old trend. Then Todd Palin can race his snowmobile all the way to Moscow. So we invade Russia , boot Putin out of his autocratic throne, and slurp up the Caspian Sea as if it were part of ANWR.

Palin’s oil pedigree works with her cries for “Victory” in Iraq. What about the millions internally displaced Iraqi refugees, the hundreds of thousands of war casualties, the country’s destroyed infrastructure and the 30,000 American soldiers permanently maimed? Alaska and Iraq are on opposite sides of the global arena, but they both contain Palin’s life blood. As we kill for our right to drive SUVs, heat oversized homes and consume 25% of the world’s resources, V.P. Palin cursorily mentioned the development of solar and geothermal energies, after her implied cry to drill the hell out of every red rock cave and gas pocket in the western United States. That’s the Republican ticket.

Ms. Palin has great political acumen. But if she had to fill McCain’s creaky old shoes someday, I’m sure that every American will have a big SUV filled with soccer equipment and coupons for free gas (sorry Sarah, this is the lower 48, we don’t care about Hockey). Meanwhile, universal health care goes down the drain, most of America is owned by Asian and European capital and wars continue being waged at the expense of American taxpayers. I did not hear one solution to our ailing economy in Palin’s speech, nor a viable alternative to Bush’s reckless domestic and foreign policies. After all, she and her fellow Republicans caution us that it is a “dangerous” world and that Barack’s desire to speak to our sworn enemies without pre-conditions is reckless. I have news for you Sarah: America’s unilateral foreign policy is the bain of the known universe – you can only spit in the face of the U.N., the Kyoto Protocols and world opinion for so long until all of your global neighbors despise you. When the oil runs out, you’ll have no more big toys to bomb your enemies into submission.

Powerful orators can sway us, just as Obama can with his charisma. Palin mocked Obama’s messianic message as “a parting of the seas,” but I’d rather see the movie with Barack as Moses, than McCain and Palin in another lousy John Wayne western.

Don't cry for me USA !

Hillary's speech last Tuesday night in Denver imploring her diehard supporters to get behind Obama to ensure a Democratic presidency in 2009 was no less than noble. But her orange pantsuit was shocking. Her fashion faux pas aside, Hillary was left in the unenviable role of passing the torch to a man she derided only a few weeks before as lacking the sufficient experience to be President. Only in the political arena could a sworn foe become one's greatest ally nearly overnight. But she knew what she had to do. Clad in orange, the color of renunciation (think Swami Hillary), against a blue background she evoked Eva Peron: "Don’t cry for me USA!" Hillary’s fanatics are mourning her, as if she, like Eva, had died prematurely to become an iconic heroine. I wouldn’t put it past Hillaryites to erect a huge memorial for her in Washington. Imagine droves of black- veiled, tear soaked women, leaving mounds of flowers on the imaginal Hillary coffin. Come on ladies, even Hillary is over it. Sacha Millstone of Boulder, airing her beef on national TV (come on Barack, "where's the beef!?") concerning attempts to railroad her out of DNC -town due to her criticisms of Obama, epitomizes the extreme Hillary faction. Although she claimed to have no "sour grapes" about Hillary's loss of the nomination, she indicated that Hillary was a victim of embedded sexism. If diehard Hillary supporters vote for McCain, or abstain from voting all together, not only are they betraying the party, but they are also spitting in the face of the fight for women's suffrage (Susan Anthony is rolling in her grave!). If they pursue this path, they will surely get a woman in the West Wing when Sarah Palin takes over after McCain's dementia makes him unfit for office upon his inauguration. Just imagine this former Alaskan beauty queen with crude oil flowing out of her like a demonic Demeter spattering black blood on the earth directing the universe from the most powerful office on earth! Fear the day, Hillaryites, because this reckoning will be truly ugly, making Dick Cheney's scowling countenance a welcome sight.
I'm not immune to empathizing with political disappointment. When Al Gore lost in 2000 due to some suspiciously dysfunctional Diebold machines in Jeb Bush's home state of Florida, the hopes and dreams of a green earth with everyone driving cars that run on water and an America not hated by the rest of the globe died in my heart. But if John McPain, whose gruff, ballistic grade exterior has the appeal of roadkill, becomes the next President, the negative vortex initiated by Bush Jr. will continue its downward spiral. The Republican juggernaut values profit over social justice, dominance over diplomacy and tunnel vision over inspiration. When Bush Jr. was re-elected, the London Daily Mirror proclaimed, "How Could 56 Million People Be So Stupid?" The question remains to be answered.

Barack-O-Mania

I'd love it if Barack Obama became the next President of the United States. Barack is articulate, intellectually astute, charismatic and in touch with reality unlike our current Commander-in-Idiocy.
I first saw Obama speak in Denver 2 years ago: the line to get into the event wrapped around a city block. I thought I was waiting to get into a Stones concert. Indeed, Obama creates a frenzy unequaled by Mick Jagger these days as evidenced by the hypnotic effect he has over throngs of supporters. I came home after his speech under-impressed. I hate to be a follower, to mimic mass enthusiasm or surrender my will to a charismatic leader (think Germany, 1936). But Obama is no Fuhrer. He genuinely holds out a promise for hope and change, "Yes, we can!" I just can't bring myself to stomp, clap and jump around like a sorority girl whenever he proffers another epithet promising instantaneous national transformation. Yet I need a salve for my cynicism. We all do. 8 years of non-benevolent dictatorship has left us with trillions of dollars of debt, a failed housing market, insane fuel costs, a draconian Supreme Court, the reversal of key social and environmental legislation and a national penchant for torturing suspected terrorists. Bush Jr. has ruined our credibility on the world stage, further isolating us as a failing world hegemon (or does the U.S. merely exist inside of Dick Cheney's Darth Vadar mind - think, "Being John Malkovich"). The Bush countdown keychain on my refrigerator says we have 138 more days of Shrub before we are liberated from his Guantanamo-ish grasp. If McCain is elected, we might as well move to Canada, or get that duct tape out again to seal ourselves into our homes when those biological weapons blow through our cities. He wants to stay in Iraq for 100 years: well, let him move there and build his 8th residence in Baghdad. Cindy would look great in a Burqa.
I hope Barack will emerge as the 44th President of the United States. But I wouldn't wish the job on anyone: he will have to mobilize a clean-up crew with the deftness of a wizard, while
steering USS America away from a Titanic size wreckage. He has the will and the spirit to succeed, but will the rest of Washington, the American public and the world support his vision?
I hope so. So enough Pomp and Circumstance. Let's blow our own horn at the Democratic Convention, but then get down to business. The Change We Can Believe In is a change that is yet to happen, but must.