I went to the gym after work. Five hundred crunches. Worked out the legs.
I walked to the bus stop. Waited for the bus. Boarded the bus. Turned on the iPod mini. Read Roots. Kunta's capture and imprisonment on the boat.
I stepped off the bus at the corner of Ryan and Renton Ave S. Walked past a gutted house. Then past St. Paul's Church.
The dogs swarmed as I entered the house and deactivated the alarm system. Fed them. Let em out. Made the bed. Took out the trash.
An average afternoon.
And then I did something I rarely do. I turned on the television. Jacksonville was beating the tar out of Washington. Wasn't particularly interested. Turned to msnbc. Heard a familiar voice. Keith Olbermann railing against Republicans, the Bush administration, and the McCain campaign. I once loved his commentary with his ESPN partner Dan Patrick as they gave us the plays of the week, but I must admit I am not particularly fond of his yellow journalistic tendencies. In their response to the equally yellow Fox News, the msnbcers have become the beast they originally meant to vanquish. No matter. I wasn't interested in his or Chris Matthews's blather. I completed a Sudoku puzzle on the couch.
The time came. Dick Durbin took the stage and gave an introduction. A well-crafted cinematic montage showed us Obama in snippets. When it concluded Obama took the stage. I pushed the pencil to the spine of the Sudoku puzzle book, closed the book, and placed it next to me. I wanted to see this speech. Not just hear it mind you, but see it.
Barack Hussein Obama walked out onto the stage in his suit and red tie. He cleans up well. He stepped to the podium and said 'Thank you'. I couldn't tell if his thank yous were sincere or impatient. No matter. I waited for Mile High's audience to settle.
He began. Party unity. The Clintons. Kennedy and Biden. Wife and kids. Yes, yes...
He moved into the speech. The American Dream in danger. The failures of George Bush. Yes, I can agree with the fact that these past 8 years were some of the worst years in American history. Historians will see our current president as perhaps a worse president than James Buchanan and Ulysses Grant. No arguments there. We ARE a better country than these last 8 years. Eight IS enough.
He's not running against Bush but against McCain. Is McCain the same? 90% is a significant number. If he did agree with Bush's bull 90% of the time, well, then I can't vote for McCain.
A nation of whiners. In my research, that quotation by Phil Gramm doesn't seem out of context in Obama's usage. America? A nation of whiners? Well, there are those. But the entire nation? No. Score one for Obama.
I waited for Obama's remarks to devolve into an all-out attack on McCain. That never materialized. Instead, Obama saluted the man and then wittily took aim from his defensive posture. He scored multiple blows. None of them disrespectful, it seemed.
He moved into his ideas. Real ideas in a political speech. One in particular caught my attention: 'in ten years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East'. This promise is nothing less than the promise to put a man on the moon. In fact it's more. With that one line, he angered many a big wig at international oil companies. Cut taxes for 95% of working families? Cut? That doesn't sound like a Democrat, I thought.
Obama as strong commander in chief? He's neither Kennedy nor Roosevelt on that front. More like Clinton, who himself was fair at best.
Still, the speech was impressive to this point.
He talked about what we may not agree on. And also what we can. His record on abortion? I am concerned at that. He has voted for a woman's right to privacy ahead of banning live birth abortions. Not okay. McCain's stance? Well, he says that Roe v. Wade should be overturned. Is this a statement against abortion? Not exactly. He has stated, himself, that the decision to ban abortion should fall under the purview of the state. I'm therefore not particularly happy with either stance...
But then he made comments about same-sex relationships. I do have the right to see the person I love in the hospital should he get sick...
The speech went from impressive to superb. Because Obama knows how to write and to deliver a speech. And because he has a message that rings true. You DO make a big election about small things. You make EVERY election about small things. Because big things rarely - if at all - spontaneously appear from nothing. To my understanding, only God made that happen. And He's not running...
And then Obama delivered what I consider to be the best lines of this or any other speech to which I have been a witness:
'This country of ours has more wealth than any nation, but that's not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military on Earth, but that's not what makes us strong. Our universities and our culture are the envy of the world, but that's not what keeps the world coming to our shores.
Instead, it is that American spirit - that American promise - that pushes us forward even when the path is uncertain; that binds us together in spite of our differences; that makes us fix our eye not on what is seen, but what is unseen, that better place around the bend.'
His reference, no doubt intentional, made me consider St. Paul's second letter to the Corinthians, 'We look not to what is seen but to what is unseen; for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal.'
Bush has not been able to see past his own nose. He wouldn't know what's seen if it hit him in the back of the head. Nevermind the unseen with that bozo. Can McCain take us around that bend? He's old and he probably doesn't care about what people think of him. But does he understand this idea of the seen and unseen?
Does Barack Obama, for that matter?
I don't know for sure. No one does.
What I do know of Obama's record is that he's willing to work from the bottom up and not from the top down. He HAS been successful with that. He gave a pivotal keynote speech at the 2004 DNC in Boston. That's not what anyone saw coming 4 years ago. And he beat the Clinton machine. That's not what anyone saw coming 18 months ago. It's in his actions and his speech that Obama seems to understand that which is unseen.
And I think I'm willing to give him that chance to lead us around the next bend.
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