Why I am Supporting Barack Obama
I decided to write a note about why I am supporting Barack Obama. I do so, in part, to start a conversation with the rare person that happens to read my writings, but also because I genuinely am not completely certain why I support him. Writing has always helped me clarify and communicate my thoughts, though feedback from anyone reading this would be most appreciated.
Why am I supporting Barack Obama?
I could say that I'm supporting him because his story is mine.
On October 3, 2007, Barack Obama was hitting the stump in Iowa. As he was fielding questions on policy and the economy, one question was asked that was particularly unusual. An audience member asked, "What would you say is the most painful and character-building experience of your life that puts you in a position to make important decisions of life and death and the well being of our country?”
As reported by the NYTimes, he paused for a couple seconds, then said: "It's a terrific question."
He answered:
“I would say the fact that I grew up without a father in the home. What that meant was that I had to learn very early on to figure out what was important and what wasn’t, and exercise my own judgment and in some ways to raise myself.
"My mother was wonderful and was a foundation of love for me, but as a young man growing up, I didn’t have a lot of role models and I made a lot of mistakes, but I learned to figure out that there are certain values that were important to me that I had to be true to.
"Nobody was going to force me to be honest. Nobody was going to force me to work hard. Nobody was going to force me to have drive and ambition. Nobody was going to force me to have empathy for other people. But if I really thought those values were important, I had to live them out.
"That’s why it’s so important for me now, both as a United States senator and as a president candidate, but also as a father and a husband to wake up every morning and ask myself, am I living up to those values that I say are important? Because if I’m not, then I shouldn’t be president.”
Some of you may know that my father is bipolar. He has been so for the last 22 years. t I harbor mingled sadness and anger about the absence of a father at home, and the complexities the disorder brings to our relationship.
But I think many Americans, even those who grew up with fathers, even with fathers cared for them, laughed with them, and taught them what it was to be a man - even these young and graying male Americans are today, tragically often, wandering around lost, whether in the Los Angeles ghettos or Manhattan law firms.
One of the successes of modern society is that many middle class men have no existential battles to fight. We have not had a draft that required us to serve our country. We don't have the training and team-building that come with team sports. And that transition from brute strength and hierarchy to more nuanced articulations of power and progress leave us frustrated, confused - in a word, emasculated.
Why else does Fight Club resonate so well with today's audiences and readers? Why else does Rebel Without A Cause continue to strike a cord in our fatherless, landless hearts?
But I'm not supporting him because he is a role model for a man who overcame growing up without a father.
I could support him because of his wonderful speech on race last Tuesday.
In that speech, he articulated the need for Americans to have a conversation about race, to realize that there are broad perceptual differences between blacks and whites in society. (And, no doubt, Latinos and Asians - much has been made about whether or not members of either ethnic group would support a black candidate.)
Race does matter, even for non-racists. It mattered when a cross was burned on my undergraduate campus. It mattered when I was told to take my "goddamn Jap self and goddamn Jap car back home" when I was stuck on the side of the road in Enfield, NY.
In a broader sense, psychological tests (and empirical evidence from salespeople) have shown that similarity between individuals facilitates cooperation and compliance. Even dating handbooks advise frustrated singles to mirror their date's gestures to communicate interest and agreement, and facilitate a more welcoming atmosphere.
Those of us of minority ethnic status frequently do not have the clear role models, the hero figures, the leaders we would like to emulate.
An example: prominent contemporary Asian-American role models include John Yoo (enabler of Cheney's push to expand presidential powers during his time in the DoJ Office of Legal Council), Daniel Dae Kim (supporting actor in Lost), and John Cho (Harold from Harold and Kumar). In an earlier time, there was Gedde Watanabe (Long Duk Dong in Sixteen Candles) and Mickey Rooney - sort of (he donned yellowface to play Japanese landlord/pervert Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany's).
Fabulous.
Many have hailed Obama's address as a landmark speech. A few, especially in right-wing radio and television, panned his binary use of teleprompters and considered it a poorly written/recited speech.
There is no way this compares to the fine sermons of Dr. Martin Luther King, or the poetry of the Kennedys. At least one UK commentator compared his speech to those of Lincoln - our friends across the Atlantic can be forgiven for their hyperbole, and understood for their desperation for "something else" from America.
Mr. Obama had the benefit of two teleprompters and safety when he delivered his speech - Bobby Kennedy had neither as he addressed supporters in Indianapolis to inform them that Dr. King had been shot. Somehow, he made Aeschylus resonate with a poor, urban audience, and saved that city from the riots that burned every other major American city that night.
Obama's speech didn't need to be a sermon. His path, and the path so many of us now tread, had been blazed by others. Our passage on this ship of state has, too often, been paid in the blood of our ancestors. This is not the dawn of a revolution in race relations - the revolution came and went over some centuries. This speech was a call for reformation, though still important in its efforts to build upon the partial successes of the past.
In no other nation is his story possible. My story might be, but I'm not about to push my luck and leave to find out.
So I could support him because of his speech on race - and it may have tipped the balance - but it's not the main reason.
I am also definitely not supporting him based on his plans for the space program.
For those whose professions and megalomaniacal predilections concern human spaceflight, we noted that Obama was planning on postponing Constellation a few years and using that money to fund federal science education programs. In the last couple months, he reversed course.
Maybe he did it because of pressure from space advocates. Maybe someone informed his campaign that large-scale engineering projects can't and don't work that way (especially since NASA's boomer workforce will be - or should be - retiring soon). Maybe he did it because that additional "gap" would mean additional hundreds of millions of dollars going to Russian (maybe European?) space agencies to ferry American astronauts to and from low-earth orbit.
Maybe he decided he needed to win Florida.
In any case, this instance, as well as the failure of a staffer to name his significant accomplishments in the Senate on national television, revealed that he and his team have much growing to do. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Yet it does explain why Clinton has - with mixed success - used experience as a hammer/can opener against Prince Charming's suit of armor, hoping to show that the emperor wears no clothes.
So it's not space policy, or experience.
And, just in case you're wondering, I'm not a misogynist, or at least am trying, through the efforts and wisdom of my wonderful female colleagues, to be less of one. I'm also not plagued terribly by "white guilt".
So why am I supporting Barack Obama?
I'm supporting him because one of the (un)intended consequences of the Bush administration was to take Americans' existing skepticism about their government and further erode our confidence in the necessity and goodness of government. In case you doubt this, consider that one presidential candidate accrued an active, intelligent and articulate group of supporters based of a platform of eliminating the IRS and personal income taxes.
It is true - we are stuck between Iraq and a hard place. But more fundamentally, we're stuck between depending upon a government we don't trust/have confidence in, and depending upon a private sector that appears unable to police itself, define the limits of the market, or embark upon the collective action needed to address externalities like global warming, long-term energy policy, and affordable healthcare.
In times of uncertainty and frustration, I turn to history as both guide and inspiration. On one thing I can agree with the talking heads - it is useful to consider JFK in evaluating Barack Obama and the spirit of the time.
Kennedy's gift was not his brilliant insight into the state of the world - he won on a lie about the missile gap.
Nor was his gift experience. McNamara initially refused to join as Secretary of Defense, claiming he didn't know anything about the DoD. Kennedy replied that there was no school for learning how to be President - they would both learn as they went along.
Kennedy's gifts were charisma and oratory, and the confidence that came with them. That was Reagan's gift in 1985. Churchill's gift in 1940. Elizabeth I's gift in 1588.
I don't exonerate either Kennedy or Reagan from their respective policy blunders and liberal use of the CIA to destabilize legitimate democratic governments around the world. The cynical part of me says to not expect Obama to refrain from using the CIA to defend the American Empire; at this point, it is part of the job description.
But I think that restoring confidence in America - the confidence of Americans and all citizens of the world - is the key that will open all our present locks, and keep us safe - for at least a few years. Nations and individuals have typically traipsed from crisis to crisis. But there are reasons that indicate that these coming years might be different, might be critically important for our world.
I have tremendous respect for Hillary Clinton. I am cognizant, albeit imperfectly, of the challenges Ms. Clinton has faced during the last 15 years. And I understand the method to her tactics. Her drive to win is both frightening and inspiring; I believe she embodies what policy expert Chris Chyba described as "the ability to see the world as it is."
I have read both Why Courage Matters and Faith of My Fathers, and am tremendously impressed by John McCain's sense of honor. His books have reminded me, time and again, what it means to serve, to strive, and to reach within to find the courage to overcome fear, and the principles and values that are the bedrock and substance of character. And there is a part of me that wonders whether either Democratic candidate might seriously pull out of Iraq without considering the probability and implications of a regional war.
In truth, I feel that, for the first time in a very long time, I feel confident that either would make a good President.
But of the three major candidates, Obama, and Obama alone, has the ability to inspire, at once, a generation that lost its heart in 1968, and a generation coming into its own in 2008. As Robert Kennedy once said, "Like it or not we live in times of danger and uncertainty. But these are the times that lend themselves most to the creative efforts of men."
For all of Hillary Clinton's intelligence, connections, toughness, and experience, she has not been able to do that.
And for all of McCain's honor and leadership, he has not been able to do that.
Obama will not offer us anything new - he cannot. The source of change comes from us, through local efforts and the hundred or so personal connections we maintain in our lives. Our mental hardware has limited upgrade capabilities, though it's always a good idea to update the software (as we did in 1865, 1935, 1964, and, one hopes, 2008).
Our fate in Iraq may be sealed. Our economic struggles will likely persist for years - and if there is an earlier recovery, that will only facilitate the forgetfulness that leads to new bubbles and lax oversight. And no man has found a way to stop time, to forestall the aging and changing nature of our population, as demographic changes redraw the face we and the world see as representing America.
But these challenges, new and old, avoidable or not, will demand leadership, confidence, and an ability to attract brilliant minds capable of candor and analysis into public service. Obama can do this better than anyone else in the field, and perhaps better than any other pretender to the throne in the last 40 years.
So I do support Barack Obama for the presidency.
But I also worry. I worry that too many of us - myself included - expect too much from one man. To the vast majority of Obama supporters out there, I have an inconvenient truth:
Barack Obama doesn't know who you are, and he doesn't really care about you.
He knows you through story, through analogy, through the vast, sweeping narrative of confusion and woe that rises like a spring tide in deep summer nights. He cares about you as Americans, as human beings struggling to make sense of it all, to feed your families, to find love, to find something worth believing, worth fighting for, or at least discussing over coffee.
But he is not going to fix all the crap in your life or mine, the crap we helped create, the baggage we carry and refuse to let go because it's easier to bear what we know than risk the uncertainty of change, real change.
What if change means, for the first time, we realize the extent to which we, individually, are the source of so much of our own misery?
What if change means accepting that if God Almighty will not give us peace of mind we have not worked to deserve, prosperity we have not earned, or love we have not sought, then we should not expect our first African-American president to deliver us from our variegated and vague evil?
What if change means taking a cold, hard look at what we do and do not need, and how far we are willing to go to preserve our privileged place in the world, and having to tear down the image we have constructed for ourselves of benevolence? What if, in the final analysis, change means choosing to embrace our empire and the identity of imperialism?
Change may not be good. It may not be pretty. But it looks like it's on the way. All we can do is choose - now - to be ready or not, proactive or reactive.
So I support him, but I warn fellow supporters. You must not look to outsource your duty, your commitment to self-improvement, to the improvement of those around you, to the change you must bring about in your own corner of the world, far from the glory and glamor of marble monuments and pressed suits. For there will be no peace internationally while there remains poison at home, frayed relationships, broken lives.
And once we fix what can be fixed, at home, our labors cannot cease. For no man, even Barack Obama, can do it all himself. From obscure corners, in anonymous cleanrooms and classrooms and boardrooms, we must work hard, with compasison, and vision, and tenacity, in teams and networks that bear little resemblance to traditional hierarchies, but do not dilute responsibility even as they diffuse power. For the promise, and the peril, of our future comes from a trillion tiny choices and decisions, and the collective action of so many individuals - now violent, now industrious, now afraid and easy to govern, now hopeful.
Until we take our many roles seriously, especially those of parent, teacher, and citizen - and until we learn to check our egos at the door - it won't matter what gladiator we champion. We are Rome no matter who emerges victorious. We have many hungry hearts to feed in our own lives, and many sins to atone for and make amends, far from the eyes of the press, far from the calamities of the past, far from the comforting guiding hand of a father that may never be.
Belief in the good is the beginning of good, but only the beginning.
But do believe. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is... hope.
