Oh-Oh-Obama

Man, what a week, huh?! I’m still trying to absorb it all. I was listening to President Elect Obama’s first official news briefing on Thursday, and all I could think was that here is what a national leader was supposed to sound like. Strong, elegant, and intelligent. Bush just sounds like a moron every time he opens his mouth -it’s embarrassing. Embarrassing to the point where anytime he speaks for more than three minutes I have to turn the radio off.

Before 2000 I was pretty apolitical. I thought that anyone who ascribed to a particular political ideology was sort of stupid. I thought both parties were overly influenced by their fanatical minorities, Right and Left, and that the mass of Republicans and Democrats, who are basically centrist, could get a lot more done if it weren’t for the wacko’s on the fringe -but the squeaky wheel gets the grease, as they say.

I still don’t understand the point of the parties -they don’t serve a function other than to separate one group from another. If there was no such thing as parties, would it have affected your vote last week? If you answered yes, you might want to reexamine your thinking.

Anyway, back in 2000, I voted for Gore. Not because I cared -but because it seemed like all the competent candidates had been taken out of the race in the Primaries, and I was just voting for the dope least likely to fuck things up. I think history proved me correct on that one.

In the last eight years, just about everything the Bush Administration has done has really pissed me off. Then again, I could say the same thing about the Democrats. I was so excited when 2004 rolled around, and what did they give us? Franken-Kerry? the most wooden, un-exciting political figure in a generation. In comparison, Gore was a hoot. It’s no wonder Bush got a second term.

What got me excited this time though was Obama. I don’t quite know how to articulate it, but it felt like he was somehow removed from the larger Democratic Party, if that makes sense? Obviously he’s not, but he’s also not mired in the sort of web of political debt and obligation that an older politician would be. I mean, on some fronts I really agreed with Clinton, but she always came off as just one more life-long politico who cut her teeth on the Vietnam War. That may have been cool and radical in the Regan years, but ‘Nam vets are dying of old age these days, not the side-effects of agent Orange. They just seem like fixtures of a bygone era to me, with no new ideas and the ability to instantly shut me down every time they open their mouths.

When you break it all down to its simplest components it’s a thing of beauty though. A friend of mine is fond of saying this, and after doing a bit of research I find that it is generally true; whenever we have a Republican in the White House, deficit spending goes up, up, up, and the economy tanks. Fiscal Conservatives my ass. That’s pretty much enough for me.

Other issues like gay marriage, abortion, “family values” etc. just don’t do it for me. Because they are academic -they don’t touch me directly. In the abstract I support civil unions, think that you ought to have ovaries before you can even have an opinion about abortion, (though late-term aborts are a fucking horror show IMO), and most people who spout off about family values also think that Intelligent Design is solid science -so I will pretty much vote in whatever way is most likely to piss them off 9 times out of 10.

For the first time in my life I don’t feel overwhelmed by apathy or acid reflux when I think about politics, and that’s pretty cool. I actually voted for someone whose policies I mostly agree with and who I felt deserved the job. (If Dean hadn’t been sabotaged 8yrs ago I might have been saying this back then.)

Regarding the historic nature of Obama’s election -I’m still digesting that one.

We put a black guy in the White House. And not by a narrow margin. But by a huge fucking majority. Or as Obama hiself said last week, we put a “mutt” in the Oval Office. and “mutts” are my favorite kind of people. Not for what they are, but because of what they imply, which is that at some point, two people came together who could see past superficial differences to what’s important. And they shagged so much that they made a baby.

Seriously though, it’s huge. And I don’t think we’ll understand how huge for some time to come.

The Obama campaign has used the word “Hope” so much, that I’m actually a little sick of it. But I’m also feeling it a little bit too.