We’ve been dogged by it for two years now. The question had reached such epic proportions that it seemed to defy any answer and obscure perspective past the date in question, Nov. 4. Well, now it’s answered, and a question remains unanswered: What now?
I can’t be the only person who had an acute experience of surreality on Tuesday night, toasting a victory that was a long time coming but that seemed too good to be true, so amazing that crowds gathered in Times Square and on Pennsylvania Avenue in spontaneous patriotic uprisings that accompany elections around the world but have been notably absent in America. There is good reason for this celebration, and I share in it, but I do like to keep some fear on the side.
Over the past months, Barack Obama has seized the rhetorical reins of America. This is no small victory: language is the currency of political power, and Barack Obama has an unprecedented amount of that currency.
A few case-in-points from recent history:
Ronald Reagan’s performance skills were impeccable. He fulfilled his main duty as the ideological champion of the Republican Party, gathering support for Republican policies with a sustained public relations campaign. We’re still graced with such gems from that period as “peace through strength” and “trickle-down economics.” These convenient packages convey insidious messages in innocent slogans, masking the truth with simplicity and helping Republicans to win elections for decades.
On the flip side, language sunk George W. Bush, with his folksy anecdotes becoming metaphors for the insignificance of his ideas and his failures in grammar and pronunciation mirroring his errors in much more important judgments. It seems that public perception of Bush finally congealed into negativity around several regrettable choices of language: “Heckuva job, Brownie” and “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.”
And today, America has just elected its first African-American president, an incredibly smart politician out of the Ivy League, with connections in academia that some of the crazier Republicans consider suspect, who had never clearly delineated an absolute set of policy principles before his run for president and who was rated the most liberal senator. It was a great achievement to convince a majority of Americans to vote for Obama.
With Obama as our national advocate during the trying times that approach, America is in for a dose of indoctrination, in the best sense of the word. Not a sinister approach, designed to conceal special interests and unfair patterns in government and the economy, but an indoctrination of national pride that’s directed toward others, creative and self-reliant, pragmatic and helpful.
There will be pride when America is powered by the forces of nature: windmills on the plains and in the hills, dams and tidal installations off our coasts, geothermal energy harvested from far beneath the earth’s surface, electric cars powered by recycled wastes.
There will be pride when our scientific institutions, drained of resources and credibility by Bush, are once again the best in the world.
There will be pride when American leadership is once again considered a powerful force of change around the world. You can bet that candidates around the world will co-opt Obama’s winning message and run campaigns pledging to work with him.
There will be pride when the twin blights of poverty and lack of health care are eliminated in the richest country in the world.
Barack Obama will communicate with America on the basis of this pride, shared by Democrats, Republicans and others, and it will be a powerful argument for national unity, potentially empowering the Democratic Congress to enact large portions of Obama’s plans. Is change looming around the corner, truly, for the first time in decades?
That question goes back to the reason for the disconnectedness and fear I felt as I watched Obama address a crowd of a quarter of a million people and declare victory, holding his audience rapt, leaving them stunned to applaud only moments later when they realized what had just happened; because at this moment of truth, when the far-fetched has become reality, when conflicts have been submerged under the steady march of progress, it is either the beginning of change or the beginning of disillusionment, the results of which could be truly catastrophic: the death of hope.