"Maybe the critics are right. Maybe there's no escaping our great political divide, an endless clash of armies, and any attempts to alter the rules of engagement are futile. Or maybe trivialization of politics has reached a point of no return, so that most people see it as just one more diversion, a sport, with politicians our paunch-bellied gladiators and those who bother to pay attention, just fans on the sidelines. We paint our faces red or blue and cheer our side and boo their side and if it takes a late hit or a cheap shot to beat the other team, so be it, for winning is all that matters.
But I don't think so. They are out there, I think to myself, those ordinary citizens who have grown up in the midst of all the political and cultural battles, but who have found a way-in their own lives-to make peace with their neighbors, and themselves.
I imagine the white Southerner who growing up heard his dad talk about niggers this and niggers that but who has struck up a friendship with the black guy at the office and his trying to teach his own son different, who thinks discrimination is wrong but doesn't see why the the son of a black doctor should get admitted into law school ahead of his own. Or the former Black Panther who decided to get into real estate, bought a few buildings in the neighborhood, and is just tired of the drug dealers in front of those buildings as he is of the bankers who won't give him a loan to expand his business. There's the middle aged feminist who still mours her abortion, and the Christian woman who paid for her teenagers abortion, and the millions of waitresses and temp secretaries and nurses assitants and WalMart associates who hold their breath every single month in the hopes that they'll have enough money to support the children that they did bring into the world.
I imagine they are waiting for a politics with the maturity to balance idealism and realism, to distinguish between what can and cannot be compromised, to admit the possibility, that the other side might sometimes have a point. They don't always understand the arguments between the right and the left, conservative and liberal, but they recognize the difference between dogma and common sense, responsibility and irresponsibility, between those things that last and those things that are fleeting.
They are out there, waiting for Republicans and Democrats to catch up to them."
Excerpted from:
The Audacity of Hope p41-42
Obama, if you're reading this, deliver this message loud and clear, day in and day out. Find a way to talk to the public without the constraints of a yes or no question or a 30 second time limit. Stop getting suckered into the media-driven pit of blow by blow Clinton bashing. It's what they want. It's what they feed on. Come back to the words above and you will prevail. We all will.