Reason #168 I Love President Obama

You already know I’m a super nerdy… If you read any of my blog, that’s painfully obvious.

So it shouldn’t surprise you at all that I’ve watched/listened to this speech 3 times now.

I love this piece because it is so reminiscent of the days leading up to 2008- the passion, the call to responsibility, the need for change. This sort of power, this sort of speech really sets the tone for the possibilities of 2012- and the 4 years to follow.

I’ve read some critiques of this speech in particular as well. Some have said really ridiculous things about how union money and communism/socialism/fascism, as if those terms are interchangeable.

Others have said it’s a campaign speech, not to be confused with work as a president.

But this speech is miles past candidates Obama’s 2008 soaring rhetoric or campaign stumping.

We’re now at a point where President Obama can say- We were right: Look how far we’ve come and just how far we can go.

Yes- it makes me positively giddy. (And perhaps a tad misty eyed when I listened to NPR this morning, with workers talking about how much the car bailout, and President Obama, meant to them.)

Don’t feel like watching the whole thing? That’s ok.

Here are my highlights:

“I’ll promise you this: as long as you’ve got an ounce of fight left in you, I’ll have a ton of fight left in me.”

“If we had turned our backs on you; if America had thrown in the towel; GM and Chrysler wouldn’t exist today,” Obama said to huge cheers. “I placed my bet on American workers…three years later, the American auto industry is back.”

Said Obama: “You want to talk about values? Hard work — that’s a value. Looking out for one another — that’s a value. The idea that we are all in it together — that I am my brother’s keeper; I am my sister’s keeper — that is a value.”

Decisions, Decisions

We need to accept that we won’t always make the right decisions, that we’ll screw up royally sometimes – understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success.-Arianna Huffington

As someone who is pretty outspokenly liberal, I’ve spent the last week hearing the epithets like, “Bad time to be a Democrat,” and “Rough election cycle?” Yes, the Republicans did a pretty spectacular job of sweeping just about every election across the country.

But here’s my confession. Once all the dust settled, and my brain finally just gave up trying to rationalize how exactly THAT MANY people could have voted for Christine O’Donnell, I found myself not giving it much of a second thought. I felt like the outcome of the election was sort of like a hangover after a mess of a night. The real problem had already occurred. These elections? They were just the side effects of fed up people. Why should I take it personally, it’s not like they voted me out of office. And let’s be honest, no one should be particularly surprised by the outcomes. When Democrats were controlling just about everything, its not like they were righting all the worlds wrongs. This was bound to happen, and for anyone observant of the ebb and flow of politics, this was just one more election.

You know what concerns me more? What concerns me is the number of students who, when learning of my excitement for voting, wanted to know if I meant for some sort of ISU election. Or the people who were perplexed by how they could register to vote- the day of elections.

Sure, there is a lot of discussion about how politicians are so out of touch with youth. Fair enough. Senator McCain lost an election by underestimating the power of the youth vote- by not taking the time to learn our language. And when politicians spend a disproportionate amount of time talking about issues we care less about it’s easy to tune out. Further, some people argue that the information isn’t accessible enough to us.

But maybe… just maybe, we have a responsibility too. Our vote matters, educating ourselves matters. And it doesn’t just matter when the election is fun. It isn’t just worth paying attention to when there are Get Out the Vote concerts hosted by Diddy.

Little known secret: It matters every election.

During election season, I had someone, we’ll call Bill, who is active in local politics tell me that he wasn’t a big fan of students voting. Why? Well, students, as he explained, tended to vote against his party and he didn’t want to chance it, with his candidate’s seat on the line. No, no, I wanted to yell. This isn’t about HOW youth vote. It’s about taking the time TO vote. In another election cycle, in another year, Bill’s candidate, Bill’s party may be in or they may be out. It’s a pendulum effect and inevitably Bill would spend many election nights happy, and many nights cursing the process.

But, if every year, we as a generation understand how important it is to be a part of the process, we are changing the culture. We are altering the system of democracy into a fuller representation of each one of us. That is something to be worked up about. One more election cycle isn’t.