Reflections on an earlier election
Below is an email I sent my family on November 5, 2008. It was a wonderful moment after eight bad years. May we all have another like it, and soon.
Hello everyone -
I wanted to share my reflections on last night.
I spent yesterday in West Philadelphia, watching polling places for signs of intimidation, spurious challenges, and other violations of voting rights. Reports from Ohio in 2004 indicated that many poor and minority voters had been denied the chance to vote, and the Obama campaign sent lawyers and law students to make sure that didn’t happen this time in Pennsylvania, a critical state for both campaigns. Will, Ashley, and I left early on Tuesday morning and drove to Philadelphia, where we spent from 6:30 AM to 8:00 PM walking between voting precincts and checking on conditions. After that, we met up with a group of Yale law students who had been doing the same, and we watched the returns at a friend’s apartment until about 10:30. Although they hadn’t called the victory yet, it seemed pretty certain, so we decided to hit the road back to New Haven, reasoning that if we left sooner than later, we could be on the road in time to hear the announcement and victory speech on the radio.
When we got to Will’s car, his battery was dead, and we had no way to hear any news of any kind. While we sat waiting for the insurance company to send someone to jump start the car, I was seething in the passenger seat. After all the time and energy I had put into the campaign, it seemed terribly unfair that I was not going to hear that single, long-awaited moment when a radio announcer would declare Barack Obama the winner. Around 10:50, the streets of downtown Philadelphia suddenly erupted: honking, shouting, crying. It occurred to me that in this campaign - a campaign that was built on the time and money of millions of average people - this was a more
than satisfying way to hear the news.
There have been many accusations leveled against the President-elect during this campaign, but just as many leveled against his supporters. We have been accused of being ignorant and unreflective, of choosing style over substance, of being hero-worshippers, of choosing based on race (or sex) rather than competence, and of falling prey to rhetoric. I am sure these charges hold true for some, but not for all. As an intern on his Senate campaign, I listened to his stump speech twenty times over, and learned that the thrill people got listening to it was only a matter of skill; I know that a speech is just a speech. I have read his policy book, and I can see the compromises and the hedged bets; I know that a politician is just a politician. I know that his image is largely a creation of a talented marketing team, and I know that it will fade in time. For me, this election was not the search for a savior, but an experiment in this modest question: can a person of both intelligence and integrity win the White House? I don’t expect anything superhuman, just the common honesty, decency, and capability that one can find everywhere but politics, and especially the presidency. Over the next four years, there will be mistakes and false starts and bad ideas, and likely a scandal or two. But this time the American people have chosen someone who embodies the values that every parent hopes their children will learn, and who will meet those challenges with dignity. This choice has preserved my faith in the nation to which I pledge allegiance, and in the people with whom I share it.
After Will’s car got a jump, the anti-theft system on his stereo required a code that he didn’t know, so while we were able to leave Philadelphia, we still couldn’t hear what was happening. Aarti put her cell phone close to her TV and I put my cell phone on speaker so that we could hear the victory speech in the car. The voice that came through sounded distant and muffled, and it reminded me of Neil Armstrong’s first words from the moon. That felt about right.
Nick
