election reflection

“ The second most remarkable thing about his election is that American voters have just picked a president who is an open, out-of-the-closet, practicing intellectual” writes Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times .

I’m not sure about the correct order of things remarkable regarding this election, but surely one of them is gaining a leader who comprehends the complexity of our world and was elected without hiding his light under a bushel.

The first election I can remember (or perhaps only heard stories about) was the Don Quixote-esque campaign of Adlai Stevenson in the 1950’s. What I seem to recall is the strange and pleasing sound of his name, and having my photograph taken while wearing a large Adlai Stevenson button. Supported by a choir of idealistic FDR liberals, Stevenson was dismissed as an “egghead” by the Eisenhower crowd. “After one of Stevenson’s high-brow speeches,” Kristof writes, “an admirer yelled out something like, You’ll have the vote of every thinking American! Stevenson is said to have shouted back: That’s not enough. I need a majority!”… No wonder he lost.

Politics and liberal left social change were central organizing forces in the Washington DC house where I was raised during the 1950’s and 60’s. Our family sang union organizing songs in the car to stave off my legendary car sickness, and I walked picket lines with my parents outside the segregated neighborhood amusement park, rather than ride the roller coaster like most other (white) kids my age. My hometown lay barely south of the Mason-Dixon line, yet a world apart from neighboring Virginia with its deep South confederate identity. Who in that era could imagine that a half-century later Virginia would cast its electoral votes for the son of a black African man and a white woman from Kansas?

Strangely, I can locate no memories of the Kennedy-Nixon election, but do recall walking along hot and humid DC streets one August day to join an enormous throng at the conclusion of the 1963 March on Washington where Martin Luther King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. Less than 3 months later, while baking cookies with my girl scout troop, news came across the radio of President Kennedy’s assassination.

Of the 1964 Johnson-Goldwater competition, my memories are of the strange apocalyptic fears the adults around me exuded and the cool smoothness of large campaign buttons. By 1968, I was a 9th grader and old enough to have my own opinions; and to note family generational conflicts; while my father passionately favored “The Happy Warrior”, Hubert Humphrey, my cousin and his wife supported anti-war hero Eugene McCarthy. The country had been rocked and was still reeling from assassinations, first of Martin Luther King, then Bobby Kennedy. I have a strong sense memory of the dark weight that settled on us all that summer at the beach as we sat around a small TV set at night watching the Democratic Party come apart at the seams and in the streets; as college student “radicals” fought with working class police officers, calling them “pigs”. The ballot box was hardly seen as the road to progressive change by most youth, and the wartime economy kept the Silent Majority afloat, so Richard Nixon triumphed over first Humphrey, then McGovern to govern for 1 and ½ terms in office.

Long, hot summer nights continued to mix with politics in my memory. The endless macabre spectacle of the Watergate hearings mesmerized my high school boyfriend and I most nights when I came home from my Italian restaurant job - where I did a mediocre job of impersonating a waitress - the summer before I left DC for college and the feminist awakening of the early 70’s.

As it was for most young people of that time, the Ford and Carter campaigns were a blur of relative unimportance; political pabulum along the continuum of the personal is political. We knew Reagan would prove to be a disaster, but were too busy settling down to raise a family in the wilds of Kalihi, Wai’anae, and Aiea to do more than note the giant sucking sound as the money flowed to the wealthy few at the expense of the bottom and middle many. A smiling Grinch stole Christmas, and the only thing left in Who-ville to trickle down was sweat.

A President from a town called Hope tickled our latent ideals, evoking high expectations, and yes, a glimmer of hope…perhaps we can love again. Who can forget Maya Angelou’s elegant tribute at the Clinton inaugural parade and the sweet soaring sound of the lovely old Shaker hymn: 'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free, 'tis the gift to come down where we ought to be, and when we find ourselves in the place just right, 'twill be in the valley of love and delight. We experienced a brief moment of exhilaration at having an admirable first lady who planned to do stuff, like fix health care, married to what appeared to be a pragmatic progressive of our own generation who could communicate with the good old boys. It was a moment of promise that turned too quickly to talent gambled, opportunities wasted, and progress lost – handing victory to reactionary bandits waiting in the wings.

As the Bushes returned and their ilk flourished, we hunkered down for what Mark (and Doug Adams) describes as “the long dark teatime of the soul”, turning overly cynical, as did our children. Kalei, in 9th grade and wearing a uniform of black, wrote an essay in which she opined there was absolutely nothing she could do about the sad state of the world other than keep her eyes open and refuse to look away from the truth. I often wondered what had become of our youthful idealism, and had we infected our progeny with disappointment or realism or some other unknown contemporary virus. We lost jobs due to budget cuts, savings in the tech bubble, and retirement funds in the stock market. No longer young and single, these things actually mattered. We continued to think globally and act locally but there were days it rang trite and hollow, especially if you happened to say it out loud to the kids, who either smirked or smiled indulgently depending on the day they were having.

Yet here we have arrived at, nay been delivered to, November 2008, in a state I always dreamed of but never quite believed would come. We held an election in which my baby cast her first vote, and my first-born learned that the good guys can win. We all know we got a rough row to hoe, but how can one sum up the immensity of what has already been accomplished by our collective choice of a thoughtful, intelligent, strategic, balanced, real, multi-cultural leader who has re-inspired us to hope, idealism and action.