Michael Jordan, who is perhaps the greatest basketball player of all time, famously refused to endorse a Democratic candidate because he reasoned that “Republicans” buy sneakers. Tiger Woods, who could be referred to as the spiritual successor to Jordan as the most recognizable athlete in the world, has similarly been silent on many of the pressing issues of the day. I seek neither to castigate or praise them for their failure to engage in the political system.
I, for one, fall somewhere in between the Charles Barkley thought that “Athletes aren’t role models” Spiderman ideal that “With great power comes great responsibility.” Although it should not be demanded of them, athletes and celebrities can and should feel comfortable in asserting their wealth and fame in order to serve as a catalyst for change. People like Oprah Winfrey, Angelina Jolie, and Bill Gates have all contributed enormous amounts of their time and money to better the world. Many others, such as Sean Penn or Tim Robbins, have donated funds and time to not only charity, but to preferred political causes.
I am not good-looking enough to be a leading man in Hollywood, nor am I tall enough to play in the NBA. I am merely a blogger. However, that does not mean I cannot make a contribution to the world of politics in my own way. First things first, if you have not already seen the Obama video put together by Will.I.Am of the Black Eyed Peas, please do so. It’s easy to find all over YouTube..
So you’ve watched it. Pretty exciting stuff, huh? For those of you about to dismiss me as just another young person who has fallen head over heels for a cult figure, I would suggest you have two options:
- Consider an alternative to the mindset you have are stuck in by continuing to read this post.
- Go away. I won’t be offended. This blog is not a source of income for me, so I couldn’t care less about my readership. If you are so opposed to change, in all likelihood, you are either an avid Republican or old. Anyone who is still a Republican after the debacle of the last seven years is unlikely to change their mind, and old people generally are pretty well set in their ways, as well.
If you chose Option Number One, congratulations – I hope you don’t regret your decision by the time you’re done reading. The only truly logical place to go next is the beginning, so let’s take a trip back in time to November 2000. I had just arrived on campus as a freshman at the University of Massachusetts. A historical election had just been decided, and Al Gore, a man who won the popular vote and all likelihood had been screwed out of Florida, somehow lost the Presidency. George W. Bush, a man who campaigned on a platform of “compassionate conservatism” and as a moderate conservative, was due to take power in a few months. I had voted Gore, and was disappointed and disheartened in the result of the election, but I decided to be fair and give Bush a chance to prove me wrong. Unfortunately, we all know what happened next: Bush proved me right and millions of other Americans wrong.
There are many theories about what went wrong not only on 9/11/2001, but also in the weeks, months and years leading up to that tragic day. In many ways, what happened before that day is relatively insignificant compared to what happened on that fateful morning, and what has happened since. To recap all the blunders of the Bush administration is impossible, but a partial list of his greatest misses must include:
-Iraq…Entering into conflict with a country that posed no immediate threat to the U.S. under false pretenses despite the wishes of many Americans and pretty much the entire international community
-Largely ignoring the developing situations in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia
-An immense failure to respond to Hurricane Katrina in any meaningful way
-Stripping U.S. citizens of their right to lawyers and habeas corpus
-Running up the largest debt in U.S. history – close to $10,000,000,000,000
-Vetoing many social welfare programs, such as SCHIP, on the ground that they are too expensive when they cost a pittance compared to a week in Iraq
-Suppressing science (evolution, stem cell research, global warming) in favor of religious fundamentalism
-Giving repeated huge tax cuts to the superrich while cutting aid to social welfare programs.
-The No Child Left Behind Act
-Refusing to condemn, and, in fact, condoning torture.
-Failure to create an improved health insurance program at a time when 50,000,000 Americans are uninsured.
The list goes on and on, but my fingers cannot. Bush is almost certainly the worst President in United States history, and I cannot wait until he is replaced. I have spent my entire voting life huddled under the dark clouds of oppression he has spread over the U.S. and the world. However, this eagerness for change in no way has blinded me or many of my peers to the flaws of many of the candidates for President. John McCain is in many ways a good man who bravely served his country in Vietnam. So did Forrest Gump. I’d vote for Forrest before I voted for 100 years in Iraq “would be fine with me” McCain.
So what about Hillary? I hear all sorts of compelling arguments about her candidacy. I am all for giving women a chance – no woman could do worse than Dubya Dubya Three, but “The first woman President” can’t really stand as a monument to equality if she got there on her husband’s coattails, can it? However, that is not the problem I have with Hillary Clinton. The problem I have is that she and her husband play dirty, and I am sick of dirty politics. Bill Clinton did a lot of good things for the nation, but he and his wife are clearly not angels. They have engaged in plenty of mud-slinging and misdeeds in their days, and I would choose not to back to those days. As maddening as any of Bush’s failures is his complete unwillingness to work with anyone who had even a mildly different worldview than he did. “You’re either with us or you’re against us” ring any bells? Hillary seems to come from much the same mold as Bush, which is undoubtedly why he expressed a preference for her several months ago. She is a war hawk who voted to go to Iraq and voted to label the Iranian National Guard a terrorist organization. She has not apologized for, or indeed, shown any reflection on either vote. She is as beholden to special interests as Bush is, and her claims that Obama is the establishment candidate are laughable. She passes herself off as the experienced candidate, despite the fact that her main two projects as First Lady were monumental failures, and her Congressional activities, such as her lack of significant legislation, her boneheaded votes on Iraq and Iran, plus her decision to skip the vote on removing telecom immunity from FISA have been abysmal compared to Obama’s intelligent votes and significant legislative record.
Her husband has continued to try to act as an oral assassin, but it is clear his day has passed – his weak efforts at discrediting her opponents are tawdry and embarrassing. When one thinks tawdry, one must also consider the tactics Hillary is employing to try to get the delegates from Florida and Michigan counted, despite the fact that she agreed those delegates would be banned from the convention. After such an agreement, an honorable person would have done what Obama did in Michigan by not having his name on the ballot. It is little surprise that Hillary would want the delegates to count considering she essentially ran unopposed in both states. She refuses to release her tax returns to prove to the American people that she has come by her money honestly, something Obama did months ago. That is hardly the only reason I find it near impossible to trust Hillary. She criticized a commentator for MSNBC for referring to her “pimping out” of her daughter, and sought to have him fired. Shortly after that story broke, it was revealed that Chelsea in fact went out on a date with a super delegate, one of the elite members of the Democratic party that may well decide the party’s presidential candidate. I am no etymologist, so I won’t argue the true meaning of “pimping,” but if sending your attractive daughter to woo the mind and heart of a college-aged male isn’t a bit seedy, I don’t know what would be. One thing is that Hillary the President would become a habitual line stepper, just as Hillary the candidate has been.
By process of elimination, that brings me to Obama. People decry his candidacy as a “cult of personality,” as a movement supported mainly by naïve young voters. My response is simple. Much of Obama’s appeal lies in his bipartisanship, his snappy speeches, and his charisma. For anyone who has lived through the impeachment hearings of Bill Clinton and the disastrous reign of King Bush, there is no need to reinforce why bipartisanship is appealing to Americans. Because he is such a good speaker, I will lift from Obama in defending his penchant for good speeches. For some reason, being a skilled orator in this era is a Scarlet Letter against one’s character, and so Obama was asked about his emotional and motivational speeches. He responded, and I paraphrase: “So what if I am a good speaker? I’m a lot more, too.” He clearly is much more. He is intelligent, he is compassionate, he is open-minded, and he is unafraid of change. All of these things appeal to young voters who have lived through the blind bigotry, disdain of knowledge, and pure idiocy of the past seven years. Quite simply, at a time when the work of politicians of the Bush and Clinton dynasties have robbed us of so much (an affordable education, a reasonable expectation of a decent job, a healthy economy, the lives and minds of many of our peers in Iraq and Afghanistan, the ability to receive quality and affordable medical care, faith in financial institutions thanks to the work of Enron and banks that granted subprime loans, and a near assurance that Social Security will be dead by the time our generation reaches retirement), Obama gives us hope for a better tomorrow. My entire life as a member of the electorate has been one of watching impeachment hearings and choosing whether to laugh or cry at the lunacy of a delusional theocrat. I am sick of that existence, and so are many others – we are ready for hope and change. Obama gives people of my age bracket the idea that America can once again become a beacon of freedom, righteousness, and prosperity for the rest of the world to admire and try to emulate. That’s why his speeches are so powerful. That’s why many college students and many young adults are screaming for Obama. That’s why hundreds of thousands of more young people are voting than ever before.
Some people, especially those who have reached the age of fifty or so, deride this movement as foolish, as youthful naiveté. There are many people of this age that are Obama supporters, and progressives, and to them, I tip my cap. However, the vast majority of Obama haters come from those who have reached an age of “maturity” that they feel entitles them to belittle those who are young. To those people, I have one admonishment, and one warning.
The vast majority of you have no right to criticize our generation in any way. In your infinite wisdom, most of you stood by while a brave minority struggled to pass basic civil rights legislation in the 1960’s. Many of you failed to speak up as the war in Vietnam raged, or verbally or physically attacked soldiers who had been drafted against their will. Neither extreme is acceptable. You elected George H.W. Bush, a man who is an angel compared to his son, but a devil compared to the rest of the populace. You clamored for the details of Bill Clinton’s sex life while ignoring the unrest and atrocities in Yugoslavia and other spots around the world. You elected the worst president in U.S. history twice. Statistically, people of your age stand at the forefront of movements that seek to prohibit gay marriage, to deny global warming, to continue the war with Iraq or to incite war with Iran, to cut funding to social welfare programs, and deny many other popular movements in the United States. In short, you stand in the way of a changing world, and you stand in thwe way of progress. Such stubbornness and willful ignorance it what brings me to a warning of sorts. We will not be stopped.
You may succeed in electing McCrazy or Billary, but soon enough, your influence will have eroded. Your woeful track record will become a thing of the past, and your ideas will become consigned to the trash heap of history. Members of the Millennial generation are only now awakening to the raw power we hold. We are young and while we may not have much money, we have plenty of passion and aren’t afraid to throw ourselves into the things we care about. We like to vote. We are significantly more liberal, more tolerant, and more internationally aware than our predecessors. Thanks to the Internet, we are much more able to organize and come together. For the most part, we are better read and better informed than anyone believes. If that isn’t enough, consider our size: twice the size of Generation X , and larger than the Baby Boomers, as well. Not yet convinced? Think about all the passion and all the enthusiasm that is so evident in this election. Now consider the fact that only those born before 1990 will be able to vote in this election. The Millennial Generation is comprised of those born between 1982 and 2000. Anyone can do the math – less than half of collective power is being exercised in this election. No matter what happens in 2008, subsequent elections belong to us. Americans are becoming more diverse, more educated, and more liberal. Americans are changing, and so too will America. For the first time in a long while, there is a candidate that can make me and my fellow Americans proud of our country and our government. Barack Obama. Yes we can.
