Posted on 16 December 2007 by Antonio D. French
I spent 11 hours on a bus yesterday riding to and from Iowa to campaign in a snow storm for Barack Obama. I was one of 130 St. Louisans — including a statewide elected official, two state senators and a former mayor — that made the long trek on a snowy Saturday morning because we believe Senator Obama is the best person to restore America’s promise of hope and greatness.
After I get a bit more rest, I’ll piece together some video and photos from the trip for you all to see. But here are a few thoughts about the journey.
First, it was remarkable to see the wide range of people whose lives Obama has touched and to whom he brings personal inspiration.
It was former St. Louis mayor Vince Schoemehl who told the rest of our group yesterday that every generation has a great and inspirational leader — in the same tradition as Presidents J.F.K. and F.D.R. For this generation, he said, that man is Barack Obama.
Along with Mayor Schoemehl, other believers on board included State Auditor Susan Montee from St. Joe, MO; State Senators Maida Coleman and Jeff Smith (St. Louis City); St. Louis Aldermen Kacie Starr Triplett (6th Ward) and Sam Moore (4th Ward); Northwoods Alderman Errol Bush; Committeewoman Yaphett El-Amin (1st Ward); and dozens of students, professionals, educators, teens, and homemakers.
After the five-hour drive to Ottumwa, we stopped by the Obama campaign headquarters for a quick training in door-to-door campaigning and were quickly out in the snow, making our way from house to house.
To a one, every Iowan I spoke to was extraordinarily nice, especially considering I must’ve been the 15th campaigner to knock on their door this month. And most that I talked to were leaning towards or definitely caucusing for Obama. Three times I was told “anybody but Hillary.” I coded that ABH.
The one thing I wished I could share most with my St. Louisans back home — especially my African-American brothers and sisters — is how frustratingly wrong so many of them are when they say this ignorant rant of “white folks ain’t gonna support no black man for president.”
This was something I recently discussed on the “Sunday Morning Live” radio show (see video).
Every Obama supporter I saw in Iowa was white, middle-class, tired of the direction of our country, and inspired by the hope represented by Barack Obama.
This is a different country than the one my parents and grandparents knew. The problem is that too many of our political leaders haven’t realized it. Obama does.
On the way back, I read on my phone that the Boston Globe had endorsed Obama in the very important New Hampshire primary on Jan. 8.
The editorial, like our Iowa trip, was truly inspiring.
From the Boston Globe, Dec. 15, 2007:
THE FIRST American president of the 21st century has not appreciated the intricate realities of our age. The next president must. The most sobering challenges that face this country - terrorism, climate change, disease pandemics - are global. America needs a president with an intuitive sense of the wider world, with all its perils and opportunities. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois has this understanding at his core. The Globe endorses his candidacy in New Hampshire’s Democratic presidential primary Jan. 8.
Many have remarked on Obama’s extraordinary biography: that he is the biracial son of a father from Kenya and a mother who had him at 18; that he was raised in the dynamic, multi-ethnic cultures of Hawaii and Indonesia; that he went from being president of the Harvard Law Review to the gritty and often thankless work of community organizing in Chicago; that, at 46, he would be the first post-baby-boom president.
What is more extraordinary is how Obama seals each of these experiences to his politics. One of the lessons he took from organizing poor families in Chicago, he says, was “how much people felt locked out of their government,” even at the local level. That experience anchors his commitment to transparency and accountability in Washington.
Similarly, his exposure to foreign lands as a child and his own complex racial identity have made him at ease with diversity - of point of view as well as race or religion. “I’ve had to negotiate through different cultures my whole life,” he says. He speaks with clarity and directness, and he is also a listener, a lost art in our politics.
In what looks like prescience today, Obama was against the Iraq war from the start. But his is not the stereotypical 1960s antiwar reflex. “I don’t oppose all wars,” he said in the fall of 2002. “I’m opposed to rash wars.”
When it comes to waging peace, Obama has the leadership skills to reset the country’s reputation in the world. He notes, for example, that the United States would be in a stronger position with Iran if it took more seriously its own commitment to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. His bill, cosponsored with Senator Richard Lugar, to add conventional weapons to the nation’s threat reduction initiative, became law this year.
On domestic issues, the major Democratic candidates are reduced to parsing slivers of difference. But Obama has been more forthright in declaring his slightly heterodox positions to traditional Democratic constituencies. His support for merit pay for teachers, or a cap on carbon emissions, suggests a healthy independence from the established order.
The first major bill to Obama’s name in the Illinois Legislature was on campaign ethics reform. In Washington, he coauthored this year’s sweeping congressional lobbying reform law. When he describes his approach to healthcare negotiations, he says, “The insurance and drug companies will get a seat at the table, but they won’t get to buy every chair.”
Obama’s critics, and even many who want to support him, worry about his relative lack of experience. It is true that other Democratic contenders have more conventional resumes and have spent more time in Washington. But that exposure has tended to give them a sense of government’s constraints. Obama is more animated by its possibilities.
In our view, the choice on the Democratic side is between Obama and Hillary Clinton. Clinton has run a diligent, serious campaign, and her command of the issues is deep and reassuring. But her approach is needlessly defensive, a backward glance at the bruising political battles of the 1990s. Obama’s candidacy looks forward.
Obama’s memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” is divided into three main sections. The first is a reflection on his youthful search for identity. The second recounts his days in Chicago, which include the first stirrings of a religious life. The third is a roots pilgrimage to Kenya, to better understand his often absent father. It is hard to read this book without longing for a president with this level of introspection, honesty, and maturity - and Obama published it when he was only 33.
“I genuinely believe that our security and prosperity are going to depend on how we manage our continued integration into the rest of the world,” he says. Obama’s story is the American story, a deeply affecting tale of possibility. People who vote for him vote their hopes. Even after seven desolating years, this country has not forgotten how to hope.
One factor in McCaskill’s endorsement may have been that her relationship with Hillary Clinton has been a bit shaky dating back to when McCaskill was running for the senate in 2006.
