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Hanging out at a bar in Minneapolis’s “Nordeast” on election night, I could almost feel the wave of relief, celebration, and optimism blow across the country like a gale as the major news networks unequivocally announced Barack Obama as the winner of the 2008 presidential election. His supporters erupted in cheers, hoots, and clapping, the few McCain supporters in the bar put their heads in their hands, and the room raised their glasses to the fact that Obama will be our next president.
Impromptu parties erupted across the country. Cake was served, music was blasted from boom boxes, bottles and blunts were passed around, and eventually everyone got to sleep (well, almost everybody). The struggle was over, and we were victorious.
Not so fast. If the streaks of gray that have recently cropped up in Obama’s hair are any indicator of the stress he’s endured over the last two years, he will surely be wrinkled and white-headed by the end of the next four. Getting out the vote and getting him elected was only the prologue to the epic which has just begun.
I do not envy him. He has inherited the problems of the last eight years and countless years before that. With a record deficit, a record debt, an economy in shambles, a broken healthcare system, and two wars with no clear ending in sight, saying that Barry has his work cut out for him would be a gross understatement. And though we’ve probably all thought about it, no one wants to say the big A-word that’s on everyone’s mind: assassination.
I’m not talking just about the kind of assassination that takes a life. I’m talking about character and political assassination. Barack Obama has promised so much change it’s hard to imagine he could possibly deliver on all of it. Any one man who tries to rapidly implement the kinds of fundamental change he’s eluded to will be promptly and effectively destroyed, as have many well-intentioned politicians and activists before him. And you’d better believe that when he does falter, his Republican adversaries are going to pounce on him with razor-sharp claws and tear him to pieces. Remember the Monica Lewinsky scandal? How much of that was really about a blowjob, and how much was about forever tarnishing the reputation of one the most well-received Democrats in American history?
I have hope. I have faith. But I also have skepticism. To think that all of America’s problems are going to just disappear now that we elected Obama is childish. We have to hold our heads high and hope he can handle the myriad problems facing our country, but we also have to be prepared for a let down. More importantly, we have to be prepared to acknowledge that he is only a man, no man is perfect, and when that time comes, don’t jump on the bandwagon and turn on this man who has promised so much hope and change. Get active and try to help him bring it.
As for the literal meaning of that ominous A-word, that is certainly a concern. Many of those who tried to bring the kind of radical change Obama promises were stopped dead in their tracks: Evers, Kennedy, King, Kennedy again, Wellstone, and countless others before them, in our country and abroad. But this is something we have no control over—something no one has control over, save the Secret Service and the intelligence communities whose job it is to decapitate such plots before they can be carried out. Some such half-baked plans have already been uncovered and stopped, yet the media has hardly talked about them. There will most certainly be more, and all we can do is hope that the people whose job it is to protect the president do their job well. Should Obama go the way of so many progressive leaders before him, he will be a martyr. Martyrdom may bring sadness, sympathy, and outrage, but it does not bring change—at least not the kind of change we need.
My greatest hope is that we the people can make it possible for him to bring about the change we need. If we as a majority can overcome the racism, anti-socialist rhetoric, class warfare, and party politics that stand like boulders in the road of progress, then I’ll be the first to declare what we all hope is true: Yes We Can!
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by Roe Pressley |
