As we've all heard by now, Barack Obama made history last night by being the first minority candidate to win a nomination from a major party for the presidency of the United States. Unfortunately his victory is being slightly eclipsed by Hillary Clinton's lack of grace and unfettered ego. As much as I'd like to vent about her speech last night and pick out every tidbit of boundless narcissism and arrogance from it, I'll leave that to this morning's press. Instead, I want to look at Obama's speech and what his candidacy has stood for so far.
Last night's speech was incredible. He started off slow to congratulate Clinton's effort in the primaries and made a pitch to her supporters (who, by her own doing, have become poker chips in this game). He also complimented McCain before taking a few jabs at the Republican in response that candidate's speech earlier in the night. But the meat of Obama's speech came out at the end where he laid his campaign out for everyone to hear.
This man can do what only few others have been able to do. He makes you look upon him and see yourself and your dreams. He doesn't espouse himself or his ability to make the world a better place. Instead he only asks you to put him in a position where he can help us make America great again. He doesn't resort to waving the bloody flag of 9/11 for political purposes like Clinton did in her speech. Instead he referred to the great leaders of the past who stood for change and kept America at the summit of global prominence. This is important because fear mongering blinds the public from the truth and leads to gaffes like the Iraq war and the Patriot Act.
His campaign is not about himself. He never once referred to himself in the speech. The only promise he made was that neither his campaign nor his party would every "use religion as a wedge and patriotism as a bludgeon." This is powerful stuff. He took aim at everything the Republicans have done in the past 7 years and promised a departure from it. He has effectively given the Democratic Party a new foreign policy that differs itself from the Republican paradigm. John Kerry lost an election partly because he couldn't make this distinction. Obama doesn't merely offer change and leave it as an abstract concept that we can strive for. He put it on the table yesterday and he told us how we'll change.
He wants to use diplomacy as our primary weapons and concentrate on the "good war" in Afghanistan. The Republicans have called this appeasement. But was talking to Libya and getting them off the terror list appeasement? Was talking to North Korea and halting their nuclear ambitions appeasement? The Republican policy of having no policy in the Middle East has lead to America being marginalized in a region where we've committed billions of dollars of resources. The Arab states have no confidence in us whatsoever and even Israel has gone behind our backs to negotiate with Syria (who has sought to negotiate with us for some time now). It has become clear that any solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict will not currently go through the United States but through regional powers such as Egypt, Turkey, and Lebanon.
Obama also understands that outsourcing will never be stopped. As long as we are a capitalist society, every corporation will seek to operate as efficiently as possible. But he understands that we need to encourage jobs that cannot be outsourced such as those in the tech sector and infrastructure reconstruction. He wants to make college education "a birthright" and not a privilege of the bourgeois. Both of these things need to be combined to revitalize the American ingenuity that has kept us in front for the better part of the century.
His entire speech focused on not how great his campaign has been or how great he can be. It focused on how great America can still be. We've fallen from the top a bit and our lead in the global power race has been cut recently. We have no moral authority and are considered the bully of the global theater once again. Our nation has not led the world the way the world wants us to lead them. We refuse to take part in greenhouse gas reduction and global warming. Obama mentioned a carbon tax cap and trade in his speech last night. He clearly knows what the nation needs domestically and what the world expects of us. We are the beacon of hope in this world but the bulb in the lighthouse has been flickering for the past 7 years. Its time to replace it and light the way for the rest of the globe to follow.
