The Vision Thing

In the last year, I have written 27, now to be 28 blogs on the topic of Obama. From the beginning, until his recent trip to the Middle East and Europe, he has time and again verified my original feeling he was the right one for today. In those blogs, I went into his background, experience, and the skills that I believe he possesses and that would benefit this country in 2009 if he is elected president. I am not repeating all that (check labels for list) but now I want to write about what I believe are his most important gifts-- his sense of purpose and the rhetorical skills to convey that.

Republicans and earlier Hillary have blasted him for being a gifted speaker. So in the America of 2008, it's bad to be able to write or speak inspirational words? It wasn't always.

"Four Score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Abraham Lincoln
or

"When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and Nature's God entitled them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation." Thomas Jefferson

or

"We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans - born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage - and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world." John F. Kennedy

When did the necessity to talk down to Americans, to not respect their ability to grasp what is going on, become the rule of this land? When did being fun at a barbecue matter more than someone's intelligence and education? Since when did speeches that demand nothing from us become the ones to value? All this talk about elitism being a problem, how about just picking the president by lottery since his skills aren't a factor if we want him to be just like us?

When did this nation reach a point where the kind of rhetoric we wanted in our leaders involved little words and suggested going shopping was our highest duty to our nation? Can you imagine such a suggestion as WWII was getting started, and we had to rebuild almost our entire Navy.

What happened from our proud beginning, from the nation building that demanded sweat, blood and tears, what has happened to dumb us down and leave us victim to men who call on the worst of us and not the best?

One of the biggest criticisms that the Republican party can throw against Obama (when they aren't suggesting he's a traitor or terrorist himself) is to say he is too intellectual, too smart and his rhetoric is too soaring. This is the one that can stick because he obviously is a gifted speaker.

When they say he's inexperienced, the argument can be rebutted by his years in state legislature, teaching, community organizing, his proven good judgment on one issue after another, and now in the US Senate. Of course, some won't bother to do that research (maybe can't) And there are those who trust someone like a Rush Limbaugh to tell them what to think. Limbaugh might say in satire that his listeners don't need to go anywhere else for their information, but how many believe him and don't bother to check anything for themselves?

One of the things that has most impressed me about Obama, besides his obvious common sense and widespread knowledge, has been that he has a goal that you can hear in all of his speeches. The goal is that we are going to change things and we can rise above how things have been.

Obama inspires us to think we can get past things like torture. We can put an end to the trashing of the Constitution. We can stop those who are profiting on the backs of the poorest or from wars they engineered us into. We can find an answer to basic health care for all. In social issues (no, he hasn't said this but it's on my list) we can finally look at homosexuality as just a condition of life like heterosexuality and give those who are different full rights.

We have seen our educational system dumbed down to the point where the people who speak the loudest against Barack Obama, who are most frightened of him, can't spell or even read well enough to know what he actually is saying.

If you don't think we are dumbed down, take a look at this test which I saw a year or so ago on Life After Nexcom: Could you pass the 8th Grade Exam of 1895?.

Do NOT tell me this dumbing down of America is the fault of liberals. This is about a whole nation that hasn't valued education enough and the end result is becoming more and more obvious. Schools should teach basic skills, the kinds of things that that 8th Grade Exam measured. Ethics are taught as a part of the educational program, not in classes themselves but in how the teachers and system behave and expect the students to also.

If Obama can speak in such a way as to inspire citizens to see there are better ways to do things, this can be a beginning of the change we need. When he doesn't talk down to his listeners but rather up, is that not a good thing? Do we become more by someone treating us like a child or an adult? If he can inspire people to vote who never have, if he can do that with words and a dream, tell me again why that's bad?

A few years ago I listened to a tape about the Age of Aquarius, a new age and new way of living, and how people become so entrenched in their ideas that they will reject any change. It spoke of ideas like Galileo's and how it required a generation to die to finally make change happen. It does not have to be that way. We, who are elders, don't have to be obstructionists. Yes, we could allow our culture to deteriorate in waiting for a new generation to come along who can finally see that it's not working, but it's a choice. We can also be part of making things better.

A leader like Barack Obama does not come along all the time. He has a rare set of gifts, a practical side and an idealistic one, an ability to inspire others, a background of multiculturalism that gives him a very different perspective.

This is also a rare time with our country ripe for change after years of mistakes and a president who has warped the very values under which we were formed. We face economic and possibly climactic changes that will require a wise leader to help navigate our way through-- an inspirational leader and someone who is not locked into how it has been. Someone who can see how it might be, not just how it has been.

The United States is still a strong country. We can improve our educational system, maybe even revamp how it operates, we can make our health care work for all citizens, get back our ethics on the highest and lowest levels, stop abusing war prisoners in the supposed name of safety, see ourselves as part of a world community, and only enter into wars we really must fight-- then fight them with everything we have as Churchill said when Britain entered the battle against Nazi Germany.

To succeed will take pulling our heads out of the sand, a willingness to risk change, to work, to not expect someone else to do it for us, to not buy meaningless promises that we can have it all with no cost, and not passing up a real leader.

Obama said it in Berlin. This is our time. We can make it be so.