Perhaps the writer and comic Chris Rock said it best. In language stronger than we will print, he said, in effect, “George Bush messed up this country so bad he made it hard for a white man to run for president.”
Of course, every Republican candidate for president is a white man, so the Democratic nominee will need to beat a white man to succeed George W. Bush as the 44th president of the United States. However, as Rock mischievously points out, Bush’s disastrously inept and destructive tenure in the White House has left Americans hungry for a change – hungry enough, perhaps, to elect a woman or an African American to the nation’s highest office for the first time in our history.
U.S. Sen. Barack Obama led other candidates in defining himself as a candidate for change. His mantra about change quickly was co-opted by his strongest Democratic challenger, so that we now have two U.S. senators trumpeting themselves as insurgent Washington outsiders. This, of course, is silly. A U.S. senator who is not a “Washington insider” is not a very effective federal legislator, and Obama and U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton are both effective legislators.
Campaign rhetoric aside, change is in the national atmosphere. Americans genuinely crave a decisive change. And, if the U.S. is to move forward from the appalling mistakes of the Bush Administration, it must elect a president who can galvanize this widespread desire for change. We need a president who can transform this desire for change into public policy and – as importantly, given the symbolic functions of the presidency – embody real change in his or her public figure.
The heated campaign for the Democratic nomination has revealed Barack Obama, without question, to be the candidate with the greatest potential to seize upon this appetite for change, embody it and put it into constructive action. As the African-American Nobel laureate Toni Morrison wrote to Obama in an open letter, “This opportunity for a national evolution (even revolution) will not come again soon, and I am convinced you are the person to capture it.”
Obama’s compelling qualities are well-known. He shares many of these virtues with Hillary Clinton. Both candidates are intelligent, diligent, articulate proven leaders with the necessary gifts for crafting constructive public policy and forging the consensus needed to lead. If it is possible to forget the ugly moments on the campaign trail, especially the race-baiting that the Clinton campaign has engaged in, we have to admit that, if elected, either of the Democratic frontrunners could make an effective president.
However, it is far from clear whether voters, especially African-American voters, should forget the Clintons’ ugly race-baiting on the campaign trail. If we really want a change in this country, then we must reject vigorously these divisive tactics that Clinton and her advisors resorted to when they were faced with a challenge from Obama.
In the end, however, we do not urge a vote against Hillary Clinton on February 5. We urge a vote for Barack Obama, And, emphatically, we endorse Obama not because he is “the black candidate.” If anything, his racial background has made us hesitate, for fear that it diminishes his electability in a nation that has never elected an African American to nationwide office and, indeed, elected precious few blacks to any statewide office.
Our support for Obama dates back to the earliest days of his bid for U.S. senator and never has wavered. The better we know him, in fact, the more convinced we become that Obama is the most shining example of a new generation of African-American leaders who have the broadly accessible qualities necessary to make a difference.
It is extraordinary that Obama has received endorsements from a wide range of the political spectrum, from venerable liberal U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy to moderate Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius – who told the Associated Press her two “20-something” sons and 86-year-old father, former Ohio Gov. John Gilligan, also were voting for Obama.
Whether or not he is “the black candidate,” Barack Obama has convinced us and millions of Americans that he is the best candidate. He is the best candidate precisely for the reason elucidated by Toni Morrison: because he is the right person to catalyze a much-needed national evolution, to move us away from fear and division, toward cooperation and what Obama has had the audacity (in the cynical realm of politics) to call “hope.”
Obama’s racial identity (with a black African immigrant father and white American mother) is important. His identity literally embodies the blending of peoples and journeys that defines this powerful, multi-faceted nation. In a nation that gets less white and more brown every day, Obama looks more and more like “us” – America, not just Black America – than his opponents do.
Perhaps more important, however, is his relative youth. At the time of the General Election in November, Obama will be 47. Clinton will be 61, and Republican frontrunners Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and John McCain will be 53, 61 and 72, respectively. To most people in their teens and twenties, even a 47-year-old person would qualify as an “old” man, but Obama has emerged definitively as the candidate of youth. His youthful appearance and evident energy have helped to motivate young voters to a degree that seemed unimaginable before his campaign got underway.
This appeal to the young helps to explain the enormous role that small contributions have made in building Obama’s impressive campaign fund. This is very important for many reasons. The number of small contributions to the Obama campaign reveals the large number of what politicians like to call “ordinary Americans” who have made an investment (financial and emotional) in his campaign. It shows Obama, again, to be the candidate for change.
Quite surprisingly, in the brutal world of electoral politics – where hope is nice if you can get it, but only numbers really matter – Obama’s appeal to young voters and “ordinary Americans” suggests that he would be the most electable Democrat in the General Election. Many Democratic strategists fear that Obama’s youth and his message have attracted a large number of new voters who would simply drop out of the political process should Hillary Clinton advance to the General Election.
George Bush, a Republican, has indeed messed up this country. A Democratic president would be more likely to undo some of the mistakes Bush has made and to move this nation forward through a “national evolution” than any Republican vying for the office. Against many odds, we judge Barack Obama – an African American – to be the most electable of the Democratic candidates. Furthermore, we consider him to be the candidate most likely to foster a “national evolution” toward transparency in government, public enfranchisement, power-sharing and social justice. We emphatically and unequivocally endorse BARACK OBAMA FOR U.S. PRESIDENT.