BARACK OBAMA: The Politics of Hope

The days are running out and the October surprise that would strike fear into the heart of every Democrat and give John McCain the boost he so desperately needs has not materialized.

With every passing hour, as the poison arrows fall harmlessly from the sky, the smoke clears, the darkness yields to light and the politics of fear begin to recede like yesterday’s nightmare. The Rovian school of dirt politics, win at any cost by any means by false assertion, innuendo and smear, is dying an unnatural death and no one is there to mourn.

Absent fear the politics of division are rendered impotent, freeing us to contemplate a future profoundly different from what we have experienced over the last eight years. We are free to hope and dream.

What would an Obama presidency mean?

It would mean that the doors of opportunity, closed for so long, would swing open for working people, minorities and local businesses.

It would mean that government would be dedicated to protecting and strengthening Social Security and Medicare and essential government services like the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

An Obama administration would be populated by capable individuals qualified for their jobs instead of those who passed a skewed, radical litmus test of Republican loyalty. We would have a government that actually believed in governing rather than purging the ideologically impure.

In times of crisis we would have a government prepared to act in the best interest of the people without regard for ideological constraints.

With control of Congress and the White House we would have a government ready and able to create well-paying jobs for poor and middle class workers to rebuild our neglect roads, bridges and schools and to build a new infrastructure for mass transit and clean, renewable energy.

We would have a government finally dedicated to withdrawing our soldiers from Iraq and resolving the war in Afghanistan through diplomatic initiative.

We will have no patience for a deepening commitment or a dangerous escalation of the Afghan war. If it comes to that we will return to the streets of protest and this time we will have leaders who will listen. This time we will have a president who is capable of changing course.

We should have no illusions. The problems the next president will face are profound. He will inherit a foreign policy nightmare, an economy on the verge of collapse and the ever-growing threat of global climate change. If the unthinkable happens and we elect John McCain he will escalate and expand the war, ignore the environment and treat the economic crisis as if it were a passing, cyclical event.

If that happens we will be on the road to a Great Depression and catastrophes beyond imagining.

What an Obama presidency offers us is a new path, a way out, an approach grounded in Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and John Kennedy’s New Frontier.

What Obama offers us that John McCain cannot is real change. In that there is hope.

Barack Obama is neither the darling of the left nor the enemy of the right. Anyone who seriously believes that he is an agent of socialism must also believe that Roosevelt was Karl Marx (see Joe the Plumber’s views on Social Security).

Obama launched his campaign on a promise of unity and carried it forward on the policies of pragmatism: Change from the bottom up.

He recognized the critical problems before us and called upon the best minds in America to address them.

To both sides of the political divide, he offers a glass half full and summons us to fill it. If we rise to the occasion, he will hear us.

If we offer constructive ideas and innovations, he will embrace them.

Think back over the last eight years and ask yourself when any such possibilities existed.

From a position of obscurity in American politics, he rose to national prominence. He challenged a deep field of seasoned Democratic candidates. He defeated the Clinton machine.

Say what you will, we have never seen a brighter light on the political stage and we have never witnessed a more brilliant campaign.

In him there is greatness and in that there is hope.

Jazz.

Random Jack
Nine Reasons to Elect Obama