I don’t often write or talk about politics. I find that politics in this country is so divisive that, despite having take classes on politics and campaigns, and despite living in Washington for most of my adult life, I shy away from public discussions. Discussing politics often amounts to talking to people who have no disagreements with your view, thus amplifying your prejudices and mistakes, or devolves into shouting matches with your opponents, leaving both sides thinking the other a buffoon.
No more.
Colin Powell today came out and announced he was endorsing Barack Obama for president. One can debate for days how important Powell’s endorsement is, but one cannot debate the tone of that endorsement.
I think it is quite clear that Powell would have liked to have endorsed John McCain. They’ve known each other for 25 years, and it strikes me that Powell found McCain’s campaign lacking. His points were clear: McCain’s campaign has been divisive and McCain himself has not shown good leadership.
It is this second point that I will start with: McCain has always prided himself on being the maverick, the guy who does what’s right not what everyone wants him to do, the guy with the experience and moral standing to lead us through troubled times. Unfortunately for McCain, though, his campaign has proved to be the exact opposite of all the things he stands for.
Instead of being a maverick, he has caved time and again to political pressures. Whenever the going gets tough, McCain’s instinct is to do what needs to be done to get out of the situation, instead of doing what’s right. Instead of using his experience to lead, he has done nothing but follow on most of today’s pressing issues.
And it is his instinct to win at all costs, probably born of a distinguished military family as well as a five and a half years as a prisoner of war, coupled with his maverick persona that makes him dangerous. His selection of a running mate that just about every respected Republican thinker has called unready to serve as president is the starkest reminder that McCain is unable to do what is right, instead doing what he believes will get him to the next round.
But what Powell really seemed most disappointed by was the divisiveness. The overt racism that McCain’s campaign has been spewing recently is, well, intolerable. The attempt cast Obama as a Muslim or an Arab, as if those were bad things, is beyond the pale.
As an Arab who has become an American, I was appalled at what I was seeing coming out of McCain’s campaign. This is not the John McCain that I would have considered voting for in 2000. It is quite obvious that he is not at all comfortable with the role he is being made to play. And yet, in order to move forward his campaign, in order to appease his party’s base, he plays that role. That is not how a leader behaves.
The racism that this election cycle has wrought is not the racism I thought we would find ourselves in. On the one hand, I am happy to see that white America does seem ready to elect a black man to the highest office. Somewhere along this road, the black and woman equations stopped mattering. They were just Americans running for office.
But the fear and hatred that has lay dormant since September 11, 2001, stoked once in a while by some zealots, has been dug up and laid bare by the McCain campaign. I have never felt as disgusted as watching the town hall meeting where the woman called Obama and Arab, spitting the word out as if that would be the worst thing that he could be. To his credit, McCain did look shocked and tried to stop that line of discussion. But it is too late, and McCain has no one but himself to blame.
Just like Colin Powell, I am sick to my stomach of this sort of politicking. If McCain is elected, he will run the country in the same way that it has been run for the last eight (and possibly 20) years: divisively and with an eye on winning, not an eye on doing what’s right.
Obama, though, has led on every front. He has done what’s right, even when what’s right wasn’t the expedient thing to do. More importantly, in these erratic and strange times, Obama has been solid. He’s been the conservative one — choosing to do things in a measured, careful way. He hasn’t be right about everything, but he has shown leadership and he has shown a vision.
Obama brings hope. Hope that we will not be seen as a country without a soul. Hope that we will be able to tackle the difficult and uncertain future ahead of us. Hope that we will be able to bring our troops home with their heads held high. Hope that the time for politics as usual has come to an end.
Hope for change.
The title of this post is from a speech that Obama gave at the 2004 Democratic Convention. I saw it as part of a Frontline special called The Choice. If you have iTunes, search for it and watch it. It paints a picture of two candidates that are similar in many ways, yet different in the ways that matter. Along with Colin Powell’s endorsement of Obama, the Frontline documentary is all you need to decide which candidate is best prepared to lead us forward.
I’ve made my decision, and I will be voting for Barack Obama.
