dubious.biz(ness)

I was walking out of the Hauptbahnhof, the train station in Zurich, at about nine in the morning. Jane and I had taken the night train from Florence back to Zurich so I hadn’t stayed up all night waiting. The respectable broadsheets all had publishing deadlines before the election had been called, so they only published ambiguous stories about the election, not being able to call a winner. To my surprise though a winner wasn’t even on the sandwich boards they announce the papers’ headlines on. So I walked out of the train station in a near gallop to get to the house to turn on CNN, which happens to be the only channel in English on my TV.

I was waiting to cross the street when Jane pointed out a paper held by another man’s waist. It had a picture of Obama and a German headline, which included the word president. My heart sprung forward several beats. I couldn’t really trust this paper, it was free, called “20 Minuten” (20 minutes, i.e. the amount of time it would take you to read it), and generally contained email amounts of foam about fashion and sports as it did real news content. I also figured that it would have been printed before, not after, the presses printed the real papers. But the idea was in my head, it was at least a race close enough to call for Obama.

My fear for the entire election would be that this good man would implode. I have watched politics long enough to be completely jaded by the process, and never before had it been so explicit how the sausage was made, and yet Obama had never really been tarnished. I have a habit of couching my hopes in negativity (”He’ll be elected by everyone but the voters”) and even in the last week I had still had a pretty negative view of my fellow citizens (”They had better do what they say for once” was my response to good polling, and “He’d better fucking win” more frankly).

I wanted to ditch Jane and run home to confirm, but being wise in the ways of keeping myself out of trouble I walked at an agonizingly slow but reasonably brisk pace. Jane is afraid of crossing streets in Zurich. I got home, dropped everything on the floor, and at about 9:15 I turned on CNN and he won. I had thought about my reaction, I figured I might shed a tear as I assumed a lot of people had done. Or maybe hug Jane. Instead I just said something really lame, like “He did it”.

But inside it was the most fantastic feeling, it was the feeling of waking up refreshed, throwing open the curtains and feeling warm sunlight streaming in. I thought a lot of things later in that week. I walked down the street, and literally, smiled at the thought of being American. Maybe this is pathetic, but when was the last time somebody did that? I thought that finally we could do something with our country that I would be happy to defend instead just defending it because I thought I should.

For most people, the moment was more like “I had been watching the television all night and Obama got more and more states, and then at 11pm, he was predicted the winner.” So for most it may not be the generation-defining moment, because it was the result of a long buildup, without the sudden surprise. But for me it came almost at once, and I will always remember where I was when Obama was elected President of the United States.

I buy completely in to the story of America. I’m one of the most American people I know. I’m also extremely skeptical: of this choice, of myself, and particularly of the proclamations of messianic glory that surround our President-Elect. What I can say is that for the first time, as an American, I feel like it’s not business as usual, like it’s not going to get worse before it gets better. Most of all, I’m proud to be an American.

No one I in my family supported Obama and we’re an extremely political family. I am the black sheep in many ways. I live abroad, I am better educated, and I am more “intellectual” in a family where it might seem that being intellectual is related to being dishonest. Although none of them voted for Obama, none of them seem particularly disheartened that he won. Had McCain won, though, I would have been devastated. I was nowhere near as engaged in the past two presidential campaigns though I was extremely disappointed in the results.

I can’t help but think that this is a victory not for my parents or my grandparents. It is not a victory for any number of demographics who, while not necessarily opposed to the idea of an Obama presidency, have little interest in his victory or defeat. It is a victory for those of us who have never had an interest in the political process until this election, and who have never considered politics as a vehicle for change. That is social, political, and economic change. We have been lead to believe that government can provide little, because it represents someone else and is represented by someone else. Too long have we been convinced that the mechanisms of democracy themselves mean that we will never be satisfied, that we would receive less than a compromise. We have believed that government is equal to gridlock, inaction, and apathy.

So far as my political history tells me, this apathy stretches back to Nixon v. McGovern. The chance for change was thwarted by smoke-filled politics of the worst kind. Devising ways to slice Americans in to special interests, figuring out what every persons’ hot button issue was and courting votes by welding together a bunch of basically incompatible hot-button policies that would ensure victory, this has been the major political accomplishment of the post-Kennedy era. After the inspirational Kennedy dynasty fell so quickly there was no sensible opposition to this divide and conquer strategy. So we had Nixon. And we had LBJ. And we had Carter. And Reagan. And Bush. And Clinton. And Bush. All of them have been cut from the fabric woven by Nixon and his divisive politics. No democrat, certainly not Gore or Kerry, was able to divide people in any comparable way so Republicans usually won. But it wasn’t for lack of trying on the Democrat’s part. It took a once in a lifetime blundering of executive power, George Bush’s presidency, to open the way up for someone like Obama.

Obama represents little to my family. They are disengaged from national politics. My parents were in primary school when Kennedy was assassinated, and they may have sense of the mythos but they knew little of the politics surrounding him. Their experience of federal power has been of continual disappointment. So much so that any government or attempt to better the nation through federal power is wasteful and not worth attempting. He may represent change, but not for the better, because they would never believe that any president could change anything for the better.

For me, for my generation, he represents our chance to take hold of government and make it function for the people once again. After years of pathetic and petty politics, we are beyond outsiders, we are the completely disenfranchised. We see our vote not as a birthright but as some sort of free prize that comes included in our US citizen happy meal. After the gross devaluation of our votes in the 2000 and 2004 elections, we have considered government worthless and our votes as well. But we’re young enough to still hope, and young enough to realize that we actually should care. After months of having it drilled in to us that Obama = change, we finally believe that if we can vote just once more, it might actually be worth something.

That is what it is to believe in this man, as a young American. We desire and we desparately need government to be worth something. Our identity as a people and as a nation is intrinsically linked to it. It is clear that there is little difference between Clintonian and Reaganian politics, between Democrats and Republicans. The young believe that essentially both parties get screwed both ways, that it is the essence of a mud fight with other people’s money: everyone ends up dirty. All we do is become more divided, and agree on less and less until there is nothing any two Americans can discuss any longer without either completely agreeing or disagreeing.

This is to say, I have great hope for Obama. I also have great fears that he will squander his chance to create a new political climate. After the twin fists of the Republican and Democratic parties pummeling the honor and soul of public duty to complete emptiness, perhaps no single man can change American that much, or that quickly. But he might.

And that is the olive branch that I extend to my family, to those who voted for Obama and those who didn’t. Like him or not, he is the once-in-a-generation chance we have to make public service serve the public. And I believe that specifics aside, politics aside, it is an undertaking that all Americans should support. Whether you agree or disagree with his politics and policies, give him the chance for change. And let him preside over the nation with the honor that his position deserves.