Archive for November 6th, 2008
the black and white of being the President: Go Grey
A few years ago I wrote a piece called “Support Your Local President of the United States”, a play on an old Western called “Support Your Local Sheriff”. It was not a screen play about George W. Bush (yes I agree he was a horrendous President although I won’t go into the reasons now), but it did center around Bush after the 2004 election and just after his first State of the Union address. The concept was more about polarization (which is not the reverse of global warming), partisanship, and lack of unity.
George Bush’s legacies are many, and most of them are awful. But perhaps his worst was in direct contrast with his claim that he was “a unifier” as opposed to a, um, ‘divider-upper’. He was not a unifier, and both of his elections found America split right down the middle. While this split is not such a bad thing sometimes because disagreement can lead to good things, it came to a head in this most recent election, in which we elected a true “unifier” and put down another “divider-upper”.
Where is this going? It’s hard to say, but it’s likely (because I’m an optimist) that Barak Obama is going to do something that others were unwilling or unable to do: he’s actually going to walk the walk of the Great Unifier, cross those party lines, bridge those racial gaps, and show not only the rest of the world, but all of America, as well, what this country stands for and what this country is about.
The “black and white” of being President isn’t necessarily about race. It’s not just about liberals and conservatives. It’s not about the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’. It’s not about small business versus big business, or entrepreneurs versus welfare moms. It’s not “black and white” at all. It’s grey. It’s about the middle. Mainstream America, especially the younger crowd, is in the middle. They (we) are tired of the “black and white”. We are tired of the “he said/she said”. We are exhausted with the hypocrisy, the partisanship, racism from both races, religionists versus aethists and agnostics. We are sick of all the bullshit.
And Obama represents the grey area, the midway point between “black and white”. His African father (black) and American mother (white) produced a child in the middle, who could have opted to go either way in his life, to feel closer to whites and stick to the white world (easy to do in Hawaii) or consider himself black and go that way. In a lot of ways he did both. And he avoided, I think, a lot of stereotypes along the way. He is that grey area guy that this country needed; all that’s left for him to do is ’stay grey’, stay in the middle, actually reach across the aisle (hate to use cliches) in politics and reach out to more whites and more Latinos in areas where he did well but still wasn’t as strong as he wanted to be.
This is exactly the time for Dr. King’s dream to be realized. Obama must, absolutely must, take up the challenge and ride the middle. He must not ‘lead the black people’ as I’ve heard already in some CNN interviews with folks on the street. He must lead the American people. He must not stand up and be a champion for one race; he must be the champion for one nation. He must not reach back to his party’s base and dredge up policies that will alienate most of America and demonstrate that the Dems have not learned their lessons. He must be a moderate and a populist and listen to his constituents, not try to deceive them like his predecessor.
Obama and America, now is the time to “go grey”. Celebrate the victory and the accomplishment of a true American — a multi-racial man leading a multi-racial country — and come to the middle where there is dialogue, understanding, tolerance, community and the audacity of hope.
