I'm stealing this from Ms. Linda Holmes who expresses these sentiments much more eloquently than I can:
"I assure you that I am not voting for Obama because of this video. I have met and befriended politicians and political staff of all stripes. I still owe my former pal, the high-placed Republican staffer, his Adam Sandler CD back. I have been on a legislative floor at three in the morning watching a bill pass; I have attended countless committee hearings; I have written laws.
I require no lectures about the significance of public policy or the importance of substance in politics.
I also believe that rhetoric matters. Inclusive versus exclusive; plans for the future versus fear of people in other parts of the country; the stomach-turning claim that we should enter another age of separating “pro-American” and “anti-American” people into separate camps. These things are important; what you say is important. Saying “yes we can heal this nation” is important, because it is, in fact, an extraordinarily bold stand against cynicism.
The implication that if you can allow yourself to be moved by rhetoric and music, then you must by definition be incapable of thinking for yourself, is offensive and presumptuous. Inspiration is not only appropriate in politics; it is critical. And being inspired is not inconsistent with thinking clearly.
Yes, I am inspired by this candidate and this campaign, and I recognize this particular video as an emotional appeal. But emotional appeals sometimes allow you to tap into what you feel is missing from the discussion, and I’m not at all embarrassed by the fact that one of the things I think is missing is a smart, thoughtful person who draws inspiration from the civil rights movement and the moon landing in asking people to believe that the country can be better than it is."
“I, like many on both sides of the spectrum, am sick of the deification of Obama like he’s going to revolutionize this nation with his broad-sweeping change…who was the last president that single-handedly did so? None in my lifetime.”
As far as I know, this view of Obama by his supporters is an invention of Redstate.com and Fox News. I have never, ever, EVER spoken to a single person who thinks anything this ridiculous. I have not seen deification; I have not seen anyone argue that he can single-handedly “revolutionize” anything.
Yes. We. Can.
Hear that? “We.” You and me. This is why he has a thing about inflating your tires to address the energy crisis, and this is why he always talks about parents being the most important force in helping their kids be better educated. He’s not asking you to FOLLOW him; he’s asking you to JOIN him. It’s not “stand over there while I wave my wand over you,” it’s “let’s get a really big group of people together who are convinced that we need a different kind of country/world, and that really big group of people — not him, but US — we can make it different. He is a Donors Choose kind of guy; lots of people doing what they can. That’s why he did great with small donors; that’s why he has such an enormous volunteer network.
I have never seen him as someone who wants you to act out of your love for him; I have seen him as someone who wants you to act out of your love for your country and your commitment to what you believe. I see him as extremely pragmatic, dedicated to the idea that there exists a set of principles that, in fact, a critical mass of people agree on (”we are not as divided as our politics suggest”), and that if they would act instead of becoming increasingly disengaged because they’ve grown cynical, they can in fact effect certain critical kinds of change. And this is what he sees as the genius of America (”it was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of the nation”).
I have never believed that HE can single-handedly change the country, but I do believe that he is the most successful politician (I never said he wasn’t, nor did anyone else) in many years to tap into a strong progressive streak among enormous swaths of America while managing not to wildly alienate people who are moderates.
The messages in that video, as has been pointed out, are coming directly from him, and none of them say “I will fix everything.” What they say is that — and I quote — “Nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.” And that, I do believe. I believe the civil rights movement bears that out, I believe women’s suffrage bears that out, I believe the fact that gay people can now legally marry in several states bears that out, and I believe that a variety of other things in our history bear that out. Nobody’s going to fix everything; in four years or eight years, no matter who the president is, we will still have problems.
But I do believe that we are much more cursed by the reticence of people to act on what they believe than by the failures of any one political figure. So contrary to the common theory of Obama supporters believing he can single-handedly solve problems, what draws me to his candidacy is his argument that the best thing he can do is motivate and unite individuals to take a stronger role in public life, because that really is going to do more than any single act of any president.
And honestly, music has played a role in practically every important struggle in American history, from labor to civil rights of all kinds to the protesting of war, so if this is to be a movement, it is going to have songs, and this is one. I also, on a more academic level, admire this piece enormously as art, in its recognition of the close relationship between good speaking and good music, and its ability to bring out the musicality of statements like, “In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.”
We are one people. We are one nation. YES. WE. CAN.
