Hope and Nihilism in 2008

It's hard to find a blogger on the political column of things that's managed to escape having to read about the Ferraro disaster. As it happens, I was reading through a few posts here and there on the former VP candidate's statements, and I was struck by something rather troubling.

No, this post isn't another rant against Ferraro's statements, that's been done everywhere and I'm feeling rather too tired to raise my own protesting voice to join with the multitude.

Instead, I've some thoughts on the historical context and Obama's message of Change.


To start off with, I was reading up on Ms. Ferraro, and I think as any respectable (or not so respectable) would-be hobbyist quasi journalist ought to do, I thought I'd try and educate myself as to who exactly this woman was and what her background was, what she'd stood for and what she'd stood against through her career.

Naturally, when embarking upon such an undertaking, one refers first and foremost to the most esteemed bastion of collective knowledge on the planet earth, the most highly regarded compendium of information, the very fount of all facts. Yes, I refer to Wikipedia (with some self depreciating sarcasm).

No really, Wiki is a good starting point for a lot of research. It gives you a point of origin to look further into things. But I digress.

While wandering the hallowed halls of this most esteemed virtual institution, the Raconteur came across this transcript of a 1984 (prophetic dating, perhaps, it brings to mind George Orwell) VP debate between Ms. Ferraro and George Bush the senior, who was VP at the time.

As said earlier, this article, if I may be so presumptive as to label it thus, is not about Ms. Ferraro, or about George H. W. Bush. This article is about Obama and his message of Change, and inherently, of Hope.

In 1984, Obama was younger than the Raconteur is now, and had received his Bachelor of Arts only a year prior. What has this debate, this transcripts of to do with our charismatic candidate of today?

Everything.

Strip away the names, the faces, the incidentals. It could have been a debate from this year's primary. What struck me, as I read through this leaf of history, was the remarkable similarity between then and now, in the content of the debate.

The issues are still exactly, perhaps alarmingly, the same: War and Peace. Healthcare. The Economy. A massive deficit.

It could very easily have been Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or John McCain there, instead of George Bush and Geraldine Ferraro.

Twenty four years ago, we were still arguing about the exact same things, still hashing out the exact same issues. Twenty four years from that point, they're still here, they're still contended, and they're still problems.

Seeing this, I ask myself, what has changed? Has anything really changed, have we made progress, has there been any effect at all, of the innumerable votes cast year after year, election after election?

How much passion we have thrown into the wishing well.

Enter then Obama, with all his promise and all his emphatic stand. Yes we can, he says. And yet, haven't we heard it all before? An endless theater of plays, ineffectual yet entertaining, riveting.

Is this Barack Obama? What does this say, for Barack Obama, if all of his promises and all of his speeches have all been made before, albeit, with less charisma, less passion, or less style? We've been here, haven't we?

And yet, nothing changes.

That is where, I believe, Obama's greatest weakness lies, and also his greatest strength.

On the one hand, we are all, to a great extent, jaded and disillusioned with the systems we have inherited. It is perhaps difficult to believe another man with another promise, while the dragons of decades ago still hold society under siege.

From a different viewpoint, however, that is exactly the point of Obama's campaign, and his candidacy. He challenges us, we who are often skeptics and godless heathens (first among them, myself), to believe. He challenges us to run the gauntlet one last time and cast aside our pessimism, to embrace yet again the idea of hope, the idea that yes, we can. We can change. We can hope.

In the light of history, yes, you'll find many debates in the past that circle around the same issues today. Yet it is also true that there have been a few among us that have managed to bring about change, that have managed to alter society for the better. There was a man called Martin Luther King, after all.

Could this man, Obama, really be that different, from all those that have come before him, raising the same banner that he holds up today? I don't know. But many believe he could, and he is.

Whether his promise proves as good as his speech yet remains to be seen. What is true however, and something of great value in of itself, is that he has inspired thousands, in this cynical age, to remember what it was like to hope.

To the countless among us, who often find ourselves with many convictions and yet few beliefs, he has given a gift that maybe we have missed out on for a long while.

He made us believe again. Full Post.