Whether one was a Republican or Democrat, few things were as exciting during election year 2008 as watching U.S. democracy in historical action. That the election year was not going to be a typical one was evident from the start. Whereas John McCain early on had been dismissed as a likely final contender, he emerged as the Republican’s front runner. With Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, an Anglo-American Woman and African-American Man, vying for the Democratic nomination, it was no longer possible to consider politics “boring” or “irrelevant.”
For the first time in a long time, something real as opposed to something generically scripted was taking place not just in the political arena but in people’s everyday lives. And as if the thrill factor wasn’t already high enough, along comes Governor Sarah Palin roaring out of Alaska (where this writer got his start in Fairbanks as a military journalist actually) to join McCain and become the first woman nominated for vice president by the Republican political party. The principle players in the 2008 presidential election were obviously those just mentioned. And now President-elect Barack Obama, joined on his ticket by Joe Biden, in the end emerged as the heroic victor.
“Well what about that?” you might ask. And the answer would be as follows:
For me, the greatest heroes in this greatest of human dramas were less the candidates on whom the spotlights shone than the American people who chose to step out of the shadows of apathy into the glare of the moment at hand. African Americans, Anglo Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, Gays, Straights, Jews, Muslims, Christians, First-time Voters and Old-Time Veterans all stepped forward at the polls to flex their collective political muscles in numbers never before seen. From the sleepy back yards of suburbia to the hip hop streets of urban America and the labored fields of rural communities stretching from the Atlantic Coast to the Pacific, ordinary everyday people decided they were powerful enough and significant enough to make a difference in our world.
This was not simply a lecture or thesis paper on governmental theory but the living power of the citizenry exercising its authority.
It was also beautiful because it presented proof that Americans (on the northern continent anyway) could escape what author Jose Arguelles in The Transformative Vision referred to so eloquently as “the hallucination of history/hell.” The past dynamics of racial and class antagonisms were set aside long enough to both consider a daring destiny and actually fulfill it. That is not to imply that the election of a single man to a single office is likely to heal all the ills of the United States or the world. It is, however, an indication that instead of hope giving way to fear and intelligence succumbing to prejudice––as they have done far too many times in the past––we saw grace and courage step forward to make an impossible dream suddenly “a done deal.” If such an impossible dream can become reality for one man and one country, who is to say it cannot become the same for men, women, children, and countries throughout the global village?
And so, for the dream that came true in 2008 and for those yet to come true in 2009 and beyond, this writer is grateful.
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