Realism is supposedly the ultimate virtue for any politician. Idealism gets you in trouble. Haven’t we seen some criticize Bush Jr.’s disaster in Iraq as fundamentally flawed based on it’s alleged excess of idealism! And was it not the idealism of a generation of Iranians that brought us the unmitigated evil of the Islamic Republic? Almost all revolutions and their ensuing rigns of terror and bloodbaths have roots in some type of ideal.
What I am trying to say is that we are told idealism is the root of all evil. Down-to-earth realism is the way forward.
And then I find myself watching Obama’s “Yes We Can” speech. When was the last time I actually searched for a speech by a politician anywhere? Well, let me tell you: The only time I came close was when I watched Marlon Brando’s rendition of Marc Anthony’s speech in Julius Caesar (as in William Shakespeare’s tragedy of the unfortunate Julius). Now that is a speech that only Brando has managed to do right as far as I am concerned (I’ve checked – I even listened to a young William Shatner give it a go). Yes and the speech is a product of Shakespeare’s imagination. My point is I’ve never actually sought to sit through an entire political speech on YouTube, TV, radio, or any other medium.
But here I was watching the actual speech (not the nicely done semi-musical version). Here is idealism in person. I don’t know for sure if Barack Obama is a big idealist or just endowed with an ego so huge to make the man impervious to what must have been an absurdly ridiculous idea about a year ago. A black man, a product of a bi-racial coupling, with a name open to many intentional and unintentional mispronunciations, running for President in the land of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, practicing the trade whose masters only so recently included Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms.
For me this is where the whole realism thing fails: What was ridiculous a year ago is very close to real now.
I understand how it is much easier to go with realism. Hillary Clinton for example is the ‘realistic’ candidate. A steady hand that will not change anything too drastically. By now even the possibility that she could be the first woman President has been robbed of any impact. She has proved to be first a Clinton, then a politician/lawyer and finally a woman. Anyone who has gone to law school recognizes her practised speech-making. The speeches are meant to provide an ostensibly logical set of arguments, guard against potential adversarial attacks and leave enough wiggle room for effective defense. Sadly, lawyers only make inspirational speeches when they are played by James Spader on Boston Legal. I’m pretty sure just by virtue of his relationship with his party, a McCain presidency will be far more revolutionary that a Clinton restoration.
And who says a democratic revolution ( in all senses of the word) would be a bad thing? Maybe America needs to shock and awe the world again – this time in a good way – by an unabashed assertion of its blinding idealism.
Barack Obama will be revolutionary just by standing in front of the US Capitol and taking the oath of office. That image will tell the world what is possible in America. It will tell the truth that the vast majority of Americans aren’t insular xenophobes. It will tell the truth that maybe it takes time, but when a people believe in the words of their constitution that All Men Are Created Equal, they will eventually see the beginnings of the words coming true.
Barack Obama embodies his campaign’s Yes We Can refrain. And he’ll be proof positive of humanity’s potential when and if he becomes President of the United States, entrusted to be Commander-in-Chief of the world’s most awesome military power, and accepted as Leader of the Free World. Before that of course he’ll have to fight it out with Hillary Clinton possibly through the Democratic Party convention that will end on August 28th.
Obama talks about the ’urgency of now’ a phrase borrowed from Martin Luther King Jr.’s ’I Have a Dream’ Speech. That speech was delivered in front of the Lincoln Memorial on 28 August 1963. MLK was fighting one hundred years after The Emancipation Proclamation, to bring near the day when descendants of slaves would join other Americans of all races and religions as their brothers and sisters in proclaiming their true freedom.
Exactly 45 years later the Democratic Party may take a huge step in realizing that dream. January 1863 is when President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Exactly 145 years later, in January 2008, the United States may inaugurate a son of Africa as its president.
I’m gonna have a tough time fighting this idealism thing.
