Breathe, Breathe in the Air
We are living in an era that most of us have never experienced directly. It is an era of spirit, a spirit of freshness and uniqueness. It is a draught of optimism after sweltering through a desert of frustration. It is the roaring 20s, the boundless optimism of the 50s, it is Seattle in the 90s. It’s the age of fucking Aqaurius, if you’d like.
What I’d like to say is: breathe it in. Take it in, and recognize its magic. To a Red Sox fan, the 2004 World Series might have felt a little like this, engendering that same consciousness of history. But that was baseball, and too passing a thing to hold on to; this is more fundamental, and less transient. Let it sink in and put a smile on your face, because you deserve it.
I’ll admit, I’m worse than your typical Cosmopolitan woman when it comes to Barack Obama. I follow him like a Britney Spears pregnancy. I’m a fiend for his cabinet appointments, his interviews, his history and family. I read the story about how he gave Joe Biden birthday cupcakes several times, just because I enjoyed it so much. If George W. Bush sparked a certain passion for our government, Obama has stirred it to a blaze. But it’s a blaze of pride, of genuine interest in how a good leader can make a difference in a rudderless culture.
Obama is a relative novelty in recent U.S. history: a leader with vision andenergy. How refreshing it is to have a president that says he is reading Lincoln, and actually has you believing it (he certainly quotes him enough). How amazing it is to have a president that understands the power of the internet, or the importance of leveraging the collective knowledge of Washington. What an example it sets to have a president that thinks global warming is a serious issue, or that energy independence is something worth working towards.
Just recently I was particularly heartened by the way Obama talked about his economic stimulus plans. He emphasized that any stimulus should improve things, whether it be the country’s infrastructure or internet access or degree of energy dependence. This is, to borrow one of the president-elect’s favorite expressions, a fundamental difference between him and many recent U.S. presidents. It reflects a mature approach to taking on debt in a country that has, for too long, ignored the price tag of how we do business. (The most frightening thing about the national debt is not that it is so huge, but that we have so little to show for it. For the debt we have, shouldn’t we be doing much better in terms of health and education standards for civilized nations? We failed to use that money to build anything, and we’re going to pay the piper in more ways than one.)
In Obama, I feel like we finally have a guy who gets it, and it comes none too soon. To corrupt one of FDR’s phrases, in right now our country has little to hope for but hope itself. Barack Obama is the nexus of hope. And you know what? Altogether, it’s really not such a bad place to be.
