The primaries begin tomorrow with the Iowa caucuses. The lead on the democratic side has changed so many times that it cannot be predicted who will come out on top. As the pundits say: "It all depends on turnout." There hasn't been a democratic primary this exciting since 1968, before RFK was assassinated.There are many in the party who want Hillary Clinton to win because they want to punish the Republicans for eight years of George W. Bush, and pay them back for the Clinton impeachment. They think Hillary is the only candidate tough enough to achieve those ends, and the symbolic payback of a second Clinton presidency is too delicious for them to pass up. Others like the idea of the first woman president being Hillary Clinton. I admit those thoughts are tempting, but they don't move me to vote for her. A Clinton presidency would only continue the rancor in this country and increase the partisanship. Frankly, no matter how good a president she has the potential of being, her effectiveness would be diminished because of that.
Were I to participate in a democratic caucus this Thursday in Iowa, I would have a hard time deciding between Obama and Edwards. Both are attractive candidates, both have important strengths they could carry into a general election. If I were only looking at issues, I would probably choose Edwards, as his views are the most populist/progressive and the most in line with mine.
However, I'm not just looking at issues, I'm also looking at the man and the personality, the charisma, the ability to energize voters, and that spark of something new, fresh and transformational. And the advantage there is clearly with Obama.
Should Obama take Iowa, and then win in New Hampshire, or come in a close second, Hillary Clinton will have a real run for her money. And the momentum could clearly put Obama in the lead nationwide.
What would an Obama presidency mean for the country? Well, it would certainly mean more than a change in governing philosophy. Such a change is assured with a victory by any democratic candidate. An Obama candidacy, however, could mean a transformational change, one seen in only a few presidencies.
The first transformational change would come from electing the nation's first African American president. If the nation that institutionalized slavery for the first seventy-five years of its existence would make a collective decision that the best person to lead the nation after the disastrous presidency of a white faux-Southerner would be a man of color, it would represent two realities: first, the candidate would be remarkable in his ability to pull the nation together, and second, the nation had taken a giant leap past its segregationist, racist (and all too recent) past.
Beyond the racial implications, however, there are other significant consequences of a Barack Obama presidency. One would be the diminishing power of the old South in electoral politics, especially as the Republican Party has tried to play it. Once an African American has won the presidency, and especially if he is an exceptional president, which I would imagine him to be, it will be much harder for the Republican Party to count on a strong white supremacist vote in the South. At least one would hope that to be true.
A second consequence of an Obama presidency has little to do with his race, and much more to do with his personal characteristics. Obama may be young, but he is wise beyond his years. He knows how to listen as well as lead, to compromise as well as stand firm, to be conservative in some things, liberal in others. And Obama is the first politician since JFK to portray a dignity and grace befitting such an office, and to speak with elegance and beauty on almost any subject. His words uplift and unify, inspire and empower. His gift for speaking is so obvious that one can imagine his inaugural address containing words that rival the famous and memorable words of John F. Kennedy's inaugural: "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." The prospect of watching Barack Obama's inauguration, with his wife and young daughters standing with him, and of listening to an Obama inaugural address, gives me goose bumps.
While I would be happy with an Edwards win in Iowa, I would be ecstatic over an Obama win. I don't just want the democrats to take back the White House, I want the country to be uplifted and transformed. I want to see the country returned to the great nation it once was, before the hyper-partisanship of the past decades, before it turned its back on the international community, before it made religious dogma more important than civility, equality and practicality. And that will only happen, in my opinion, with a victory by Barack Obama.
