speaking out

At what point does the desire to be president usurp the good of the people? I have followed the campaigns closely, and, for disclosure, have volunteered for the Obama campaign more than once. This past Tuesday was a mirage for the Clinton campaign, drinking sand at a false Ohio oasis. The great irony in all of these events is the call by Rush Limbaugh for conservative Republicans to support Hillary Clinton. The differences between these two candidates is far more than the media would like to let anyone believe. At the root is a fundamental philosophical difference towards the presidency and the reason for the existence of government.

Barack Obama has a focus that extends beyond simply becoming president. His desire is to lead a divided nation to unification. We have heard this one before, from the unionist Abraham Lincoln. The presidency is often sought by those who desire more than anything else to become the President without understanding what it actually means to be President. This simply is not enough. Obama’s view of the highest office in the land sees the attainment of the position as the first hurdle in a much larger struggle for the betterment of humanity. His competitor has been fighting to prove she can do the job, and she has done so. Many people could do the job, but so few could be great at the job.

Obama is one of those rare figures in our history who can inspire a people to hope for a better future. Hope is singularly the most important aspect of human existence and development. Without hope we quickly fall into a cycle of self and community destruction. We become isolated and wait for the inevitable. We see no future. Hope widens the vision and raises the possibility of improvement. We hope for a better future for our children, and so work to send them to college. We hope for the luxury of retirement so we save for the future. What we have gotten in the past seven years is the systematic destruction of hope. An increase in debt, defunding of education, collapse of the healthcare system. A sprint towards the inevitable.

Obama believes that the government is of the people, for the people and by the people. So many others believe that the government is separate from the people, operating on the premise that the people do not know what they need. Obama’s more than one million campaign donors have demonstrated a desire to hope for a future and an understanding of what they need. If we are to allow the conservative agenda to champion their own sworn enemy, a sitting President to extinguish the eternal flame of hope, and a party to spiral away from its core value of the people, than we too have been drinking the same sand as Senator Clinton has and will soon choke on our own inability to believe in the future. Supporting Barack Obama is supporting the greater humanity in us all, supporting the unionist idea that we are stronger together than we are divided.