After a month of campaign work in Iowa, I took three days off for Christmas. Though I had been bounced around from three different supporter houses - and routinely slept in the coldest room in each of these houses - my stay in Iowa had been productive. Everybody had been amazingly nice. With the exception of one Chinese place, the food was good, and the snow was the sort I was used to (though I've lived in North Carolina since I was seven, I was born in the Midwest). This really is an experience every active Democrat should take part in.
However, I was shaken up over the next few days. I got caught in a blizzard on my way home, and after an hour and a half of steady driving, I hit a patch of ice and did four doughnuts on I-35 South near Lamoni, IA.
It felt like the steering wheel left my hands. I was gliding on air. The person who broke really hard in front of me kept on going - I was all alone under a full moon. Any oncoming traffic and a part of my truck would have been ripped off. Somehow I kept the thing on the ground ... but I ended up in a ditch.
There was a statewide towing ban in Iowa at the time; if I had traveled a few more miles I would have been in Missouri and Triple A would have kicked in. I was still reeling from the whole experience - I was barely able to keep the thing on the ground. But I was alive and mostly well.
I was able to get part of the car back on the road, but not all of it. However, that was enough for a local sheriff to declare me a traffic hazard. Everything seemed OK until the Sheriff left suddenly - there was some crisis at the jail.
Eventually, a local towing company pulled me out of the ditch as my wallet took a hit. I was supposed to get to the place I was staying for the night at 8 or 9 ... I think I pulled in at 2. I'm used to long, 14 hour drives as a delivery driver for the local magazine my father publishes, but this drive - 3 hours and 15 minutes according to MS Streets & Trips - took eight hours. It was the hardest drive of my life; the next day, I barely made it to my Aunt's in St. Louis.
Right after I was pulled out, I saw a sign that said "Kansas City - 110." As I crossed into Missouri, I saw the exact same mileage. I wondered if I was crazy, or in some Hell reminiscent of "Groundhog Day." At this Sisyphusian moment I had a bit of an existential crisis - why do I keep working for campaigns? I felt like I was ready to go home. If there had been more oncoming traffic, or if the wind had been a little stronger, I wouldn't have walked away from that spinout. Why do I keep on keeping on?
Most of the time, I'm working for a challenger; a grassroots candidate that isn't catching the eye of the traditional media. I've been on Democratic campaigns that seemingly had a 10,000 to 1 chance of winning and a 10,000 to 1 chance of losing - and both lost (all I was on the latter was a paid canvasser, so I don't think it's my fault). I'm good at politics, but I continually wonder if it is the right avenue for change. I don't know if what I'm doing matters in the end. I stood up against the War in Iraq, and I've stood up for people in all walks of life. I've won some important battles for our local schools, the environment, and mass transit while losing battles for fellow Democrats. The day my Great Grandmother died, I had to take a break from canvassing to go light her candle at the Catholic Church I went to as a kid. Later on in the day, school bonds and two friends of mine lost to a conservative surge in the county. It feels like I've been through it all, and I'm more cynical because of it.
While I've been in Iowa, my county has been tearing itself apart over the election of a new sheriff. Racial tensions are high - it'd take two diaries to explain the situation, but in summary Democrats are at one another's throats while the Republicans are laughing all the way to the polling place. Maybe I could help; I don't know. Where I am right now, I'm having fun, and I think my candidate's going to beat expectations - but anyone who claims to know what's going to happen on that fateful January Night doesn't know what they're talking about.
So why stay here in Iowa with long odds, carrying the weight of political exhaustion? Why keep fighting these battles for the best leadership and a better country? I don't know if I'm doing the right thing, but I'm here to elect the best presidential candidate for Iowa, for my home state of North Carolina, and for America as a whole. I'm investing my blood, sweat, money, and tears in America. I don't know if I'll ever receive dividends, but I'm out here working because it's all I can do. I tried running once, but for now - I'm doing all I can do for the country I love.
Because of all of the people out here working to make America a better place regardless of the candidate, I think our party (and our netroots) are going to be fine after this election. We may not be walking down the clearest path, but we have nothing to worry about. That's why I wrote the following diary a month ago, and it's the fact that I believe what I wrote that brought me back to Iowa after one of the worst experiences of my life.
::
I grew up during the infancy of the 24-hour news cycle. When I was barely in elementary school, I followed the Gulf War in the way kids do. However, in addition to having my Stormin' Norman Desert Storm Trading Card, I had a chart of the deaths from each of the countries, with civilian and military causalities. For someone too young to appreciate the value of life, I still was very happy when the soldiers came home and happy that we didn't have to stay. To this day, I don't know if it was as simple as it seemed back then, but compared to the complexities of marching into Baghdad most things seem simple. And yet, the sins of the son have been visited upon the father.
Soon after our first and only victory in Iraq, I moved to a new school after my father lost his job to the aftershocks of Reaganomics and a bankrupt employer. I lost all of my friends, I traveled from North to South, I went from a real classroom to a "learning cottage" (read: trailer), and I went from smart and extroverted to smart and very shy. Though I wouldn't know it for a few years, I had a lot in common with a young Joe Biden, who was shy due to a bad habit of stuttering. Somehow, we both ended up retreating to Irish poets; Biden to stop his stuttering, me because my Irish grandfather brought the culture from the Soulard neighborhood of my birthplace, St. Louis.
I "campaigned" for Clinton in our class elections in elementary school in 1992. Not because of what my parents thought, but because of what I felt naturally (and in no small part because of the sax). I would spend my early years debating with my Republican/Libertarian soccer coach; saying things like "taxes are an investment in a better future" came naturally, without having to be learned. We had epic battles, summoning the words and deeds of Gingrich and Clinton as we fought during long van rides across North Carolina. I lived a mostly middle-class life while attending public school and learning the Catechism on Wednesday and Sunday. Like Joe, whose current wife is a Presbyterian, I attended both a Protestant Service and a Catholic Mass every Sunday (Catholic Mom, PCUSA Dad). Some Catholic ideas - the value of life, the notion that wars must be just, etc. - appealed to me, though I must say I had an immature, à la carte approach to the whole thing.
Meanwhile, other experiences informed my budding socio-political compass. I learned about gay rights from an employee controversy at my school. I learned about nuclear weapons (from M.A.D. to C.R.T.) from debate camps and physics class. I learned about civil rights and education when local parents led an effort to overturn a landmark civil rights case (the Supreme Court's pro-busing decision in 1970's Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education) ... and won. One year, it seemed like I went to school board meetings as often as I went to soccer practice.
Nevertheless, my political beacon turned on during the presidential candidacy of George W. Bush. Before I read a wonderful column on Bush by Al Franken in an October 2000 Rolling Stone, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter came to my town as an anti-death penalty advocate. Even after a college experience that included debating the merits of magnet programs with Cornel West and asking Paul Krugman if Bush's economists really believed in the policies they promoted, Carter's lecture remains my favorite. He spoke with power and conviction about his personal story - if you're unaware, he spent 20 years in jail as an innocent man. In spite of what Carter went through, it seemed as if America was becoming more just; then again, W. for President 2000 was just starting out, and as I became more involved in the fight against the death penalty I found out more and more about Bush's record as the Governor of Texas.
Bush's memory doesn't seem to serve him as well when it comes to people he's had executed. In July on ABC's This Week, Cokie Roberts asked Bush about his statement from a March debate: "I'm absolutely confident that everybody has been put to death has two things: One, they're guilty of the crime charged; and secondly, they have full access to the courts." Roberts brought up the case of Odell Barnes, who had been executed the day before that debate. Roberts said that Barnes' lawyers had obtained information that called into question every bit of evidence that had been used to convict him. But Texas law had not allowed that new evidence to be heard by a court. How did this square with Bush's statement?
"Well, I don't remember the specifics -- well, I don't remember the specifics. . . . I, you know, and -- and -- and I'm not castigating you now, I wish you would have given me a chance to bring the full dossier, so I could have discussed it in detail with you. . . ." My guess is that if you asked Bush the names of the last fifty-five people executed in Texas, he'd probably remember only Karla Faye Tucker, whose pleas for mercy he ridiculed in a Talk magazine story reported by conservative pundit Tucker Carlson: "'Please,' Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, 'don't kill me.'" - Al Franken for Rolling Stone
Quoting or saying any more would be pedantic at this point. We're done with Bush. The rats are leaving the Titanic, and in fourteen long months, Bush will finally vacate the White House. For many reasons, I think Joe Biden is the most apt replacement, but I don't want to get ahead of myself.
There was never a point at which I thought about supporting W. Though a few Democrats and family members I knew may have crossed over to McCain in 2000 (but not today), Bush was the nominee. In spite of Gore's weaknesses, in spite of everything that may have been uninspiring about him that year, I was behind him 100% - even if my support didn't mean much in the suburbs of Charlotte, NC. But Gore came, technically won, and went.
Many of us cried about it. Many of us saw a hostile takeover by five members in a board room on 1st Street in Northeast Washington, DC. Many of us cried foul about it. I escaped into policy research, and collected three huge bins full of evidence and research on nuclear non-proliferation. I spent the summer researching the nuclear issue in a world with one invincible superpower ... and then everything changed. A year that started with the country splitting apart somehow saw us come back together again through flashes and noise that will echo throughout the rest of our lives. To say it was part of my story seems to marginalize it somehow - 2001 was a year that few Americans escaped. We all felt like heroes, even the clowns.
It's cliché and selfish to tell people where you were on 9-11, so I won't go into details except to say that I was in physics class with some of my best friends. The first words out of my mouth were "This changes everything." I think I was the first person to say something after we turned on the TVs, as instructed by the front office.
The twenty years we've been here in New York City, we've worked closely with police officers and the fire fighters and fortunately, most of us don't really have to think too much about what these men and women do on a daily basis, and the phrase New York's finest and New York's bravest, you know, did it mean anything to us personally, firsthand? Well, maybe, hopefully, but probably not. But boy, it means something now, doesn't it? They put themselves in harm's way to protect people like us, and the men and women, the fire fighters and the police department who are lost are going to be missed by this city for a very, very long time. And I, and my hope for myself and everybody else, not only in New York but everywhere, is that we never, ever take these people for granted... absolutely never take them for granted.
I just want to go through this, and again, forgive me if this is more for me than it is for people watching, I'm sorry, but uh, I just, I have to go through this, I'm...
The reason we were attacked, the reason these people are dead, these people are missing and dead, and they weren't doing anything wrong, they were living their lives, they were going to work, they were traveling, they were doing what they normally do. As I understand it (and my understanding of this is vague at best), another smaller group of people stole some airplanes and crashed them into buildings. And we're told that they were zealots, fueled by religious fervor... religious fervor. And if you live to be a thousand years old, will that make any sense to you? Will that make any Goddamned sense? Whew.
I'll tell you about a thing that happened last night. There's a town in Montana by the name of Choteau. It's about a hundred miles south of the Canadian border. And I know a little something about this town. It's 1,600 people. 1,600 people. And it's an ag-business community, which means farming and ranching. And Montana's been in the middle of a drought for... I don't know... three years? And if you've got no rain, you can't grow anything. And if you can't grow anything, you can't farm, and if you can't grow anything, you can't ranch, because the cattle don't have anything to eat, and that's the way life is in a small town. 1,600 people.
Last night at the high school auditorium in Choteau, Montana, they had a rally, home of the Bulldogs, by the way... they had a rally for New York City. And not just a rally for New York City, but a rally to raise money... to raise money for New York City. And if that doesn't tell you everything you need to know about the... the spirit of the United States, then I can't help you. I'm sorry. - David Letterman, The Late Show, September 17, 2001
The greatest tragedy of the Bush Presidency may be our missed opportunity to unite the world through peace. Foreign policy has always been my touchstone for evaluating leaders, and while Bush's behavior in Kyoto (along with many other foreign policy foibles) foreshadowed the coming disaster, we hoped and prayed that Bush was uniting us to overcome a perfect storm. Instead, he was fomenting one. We've blogged and lamented about the storm. We've had our hearts broken and our optimism foiled by Hurricane George. But some of us have come together in spite of Bush (or, in a backwards way, because of him).
2003 was the first time I used the Internet as an organizing tool. My now-defunct website, antiwarstudents.com, had a simple task - organizing a March 5th protest against the upcoming war in Iraq. We ended up having one of the biggest protests in our area, and the only student protest. We received major press coverage without any "No Blood for Oil" or "Free Mumia" signs, and we articulated a good message to the people of Metro Charlotte - still, we were headed to war.
"I get a really broad perspective. That doesn't make me an expert, but it means I'm not going purely on emotion. I also think that when a population abdicates judgment to so-called "experts", they're abdicating their right to democracy." - David Byrne on the Iraq War, 2003
"Trouble in transit, got through the roadblock, we blend in with the crowd;
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that ain't allowed;
We dress like students, we dress like housewives, or in a suit and a tie;
(I) changed my hairstyle, so many times now, I don't know what I look like!" -David Byrne with Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime," Fear of Music, 1979
The massive failure of policy-makers and so-called experts during the march to war made me very interested in finding out about the specific policy failures, and it made me very cynical about politics. Researching the Iraq War and Occupation after-the-fact was what first introduced me to Joe Biden. In addition to probing the differences between the Biden-Lugar resolution (disarmament) and the actual Iraq War Resolution from Rep. Hastert (occupation), I learned about Joe's earlier work to curb presidential power. Most people here are aware of the "War Powers Act," but in 1995 Biden introduced the "Use of Force Act" which would have curbed the aggressive use of force by the executive. Because of Bush's warmongering with Iran, I wish the bill would have made it out of committee Hell, but I digress.
Biden impressed me with his grasp of the dangers of the unitary executive. I also knew from the language and intent of the Biden-Lugar resolution that in spite of Biden's war vote - a vote I completely disagreed with - Joe Biden would not have gone to war in March of 2003. Biden wouldn't have gone to war because he wouldn't have had the respect and support of the rest of the world - something the Biden-Lugar resolution mandated. I was very sad to learn later on from a Daschle staffer that two heroes of mine - Paul Wellstone and Russ Feingold - voted against the Biden-Lugar resolution; though I understand voting against all resolutions that could cause war, it was clear to most observers that Bush, despicably, was going to get some sort of movement on Iraq. Biden-Lugar, at least, would have provided a credible alternative to war. Unfortunately, when Joe Lieberman and a few other turncoat Democrats appeared in the Rose Garden with Bush to support the Hastert resolution, Biden-Lugar sank and all was lost.
In the 2004 primary, I was a weak Edwards supporter in spite of the fact that he cosponsored the Hastert resolution. I had some home-state pride and I appreciated his populism. I never really got on the Dean or Clark trains, and I was frustrated with the political process. I ended up investing myself in non-profit work: tutoring at-risk children, being a straight ally at the Lesbian & Gay Community Center, and doing canvassing with PIRG. My interest in PIRG flagged as raising money during the long summer days took more out of me than I expected, so I started volunteering with former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, our Democratic candidate in North Carolina.
Bowles, the man behind Clinton's balanced budget, was a warm guy, an excellent debater, impossibly intelligent; rich like Edwards but unpretentious like Tester. It was a great campaign sunk by Kerry/Edwards/National Mood and a terrible mistake of a commercial (I'd explain, but I'm going for flashes of brevity). It was the first (and last) time I ever shed a tear for a political a loss. It didn't help that we still didn't know about Kerry and Ohio when Bowles conceded defeat to Big-Pharma-Friend Richard Burr, and to make matters worse I had to drive a volunteer three hours to the airport, so I missed the chance to drown my sorrows at the open bar.
That loss stung even more the next year as I was an intern in Senator Biden's office, watching Senator Burr preside over the Bolton nomination or watching Canadian drug companies convince Burr that the 2005 energy bill needed a provision that decreased American nuclear security. But yet again, I precede myself.
During the Kerry campaign, I began talking about politics again in a little place called The Soda Shop on Main Street in Davidson, NC. I befriended a blogger/writer and retired Hill/House staffer who was covering Plamegate with a focus on the lack of integrity on the part of Judith Miller and other reporters. We'd talk shop, and we'd talk about people I could work with in politics. Biden came up as someone my friend had admired since 1972 ... and someone who would allow me to pursue my interest in foreign relations. I applied for internships with Biden on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bill Clinton's post-presidential office, and Sen. Obama's hill office. I won the former two, and accepted both.
Aside from the short, amazing few hours I spent with our former President, the internship in Biden's office surprised me as one of the best experiences of my life. I started the internship on my birthday, and had the rare opportunity to visit many of the intergovernmental organizations with offices in DC, from the UN to the World Bank to the Organization of American States to the Inter American Development Bank ... and so on. I studied the upcoming German Bundestag elections using my rudimentary German language skills - in my final memo, I predicted a close election between Merkel and Schroeder but I did not predict the Grand Coalition. I experienced the good and the bad of globalization, but most of all I experienced its perceived inevitability. I ran into senators; I intimidated Rick Santorum into giving me an elevator; on the reverse, Ted Kennedy trapped me in an elevator the second day of my tenure as I was too afraid to ask him to step aside to let me get off at my floor. For giggles, here's some fan service from my diary:
May 24th - I couldn't sleep last night, and my hostel is terrible. I was rooming with three nice people, but the bed is too small, the room way too warm, and when I woke up I was late because the showers don't work! One just didn't have water pressure, and all the others (on all the other floors) only had two temperatures: "scalding" and "excoriating."
So I got outside at 7:50 am, and had to take a cab to make it to work on time. Then it rained on me, though not as bad as it did at the end of the day. Joe Lieberman stuck his butt in my face at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee meeting, and then I fell asleep. I have to admit, something aside from assuming the rear-end-right-of-way gives me the creeps about Loserman.
I saw Iraq from every angle. I went back and forth between wanting a withdraw, wanting us to restore stability and essential utilities, and wanting Iraq to work. And I started running in to the Senator, the Boss, Mr. Biden. I liked what we were doing on the FR Committee, but I wasn't a fan of his vote on the Bankruptcy bill, though I never rested responsibility on Biden; our Democratic leadership should have been able to beat Grassley's bill. Plus, I found it odd that Biden was called a sell-out or (D-MBNA) when he didn't have anything to show for it ... but then again, I promised no apologetics, just a sketch of the man I've supported over the last three years.
Quite frankly, some of the more vicious attacks on Biden engendered feelings of empathy within me. The Biden I saw learned our names, gave the time of day to anyone who asked, commuted home daily to be with his family, didn't wear the $10,000 suits I would see on Bill Clinton later that year, talked straight, and walked the line. He doesn't drink, and he never cowered from his beliefs. If Biden were on the take, or if he were a true Beltway insider, he'd find a way to be higher than 99th on the richest Senator list. He's never met with a lobbyist, and he eschewed investments in stocks to avoid conflicts of interest. On Father's Day, 2005, after taping a segment at the CBS studio around the corner from my apartment, I was chatting with the Boss when I saw a yearning in his eyes, an intense desire to go home and spend time with his kids. That look almost knocked me down. I told him he should quit talking to me, he thanked me, and we parted ways. That moment did a lot for my opinion of Joe Biden.
I was planning to ask him about the Bankruptcy Bill at our intern Q&A with the Senator, but I talked to my writer friend from home about it before I committed to that question. He told me that there was no utility in asking a Senator why he voted for something that looked like it helped his state when I had the chance to pick the brain of one of the world's top foreign policy experts. Either way, I never got to ask a question, but I did hear more straight answers than I expected. It was almost as impressive as a reception the Senator hosted early on in the summer, at which diplomats representing most of Europe came to honor one of Biden's staff members who worked on a NATO portfolio but was now retiring. At a time when Bush turned the world into a place where you were either us, Poland, or against us, the respect that these ambassadors had for Senator Biden amazed me. I was able to talk with a few of the ambassadors and representatives, and they described an admiration for Senator Biden built on a his knowledge of the intricacies of American-European policy and the relationships he has built and maintained over the years. After seeing Biden in action like that, I couldn't imagine him as anything but the next President of these United States.
To me, nothing is like waling into our nation's Capitol building. You feel the power of luminous dreams flowing in and out of neo-classical marble. You feel that if you had to die for these dreams, you could, and the world would be at peace. I wrote the following as part of an internship evaluation; it became more of a rumination over the tribulations of an idealist in that former muskeg we call our capital. As the internship concluded, I wrote:
I actually forgot why I was there for a while. Then, on Thursday, something reminded me. I was in the White House, which didn't impress me at all until I arrived at that famous portrait of John F. Kennedy. It's the only real work of art in the entire building, and it spoke to me that day. I looked at it and saw the nervous outline and solemn expression on our thirty-fifth president, the dark shadow on one side of his face, the presidential suit and feel, and I couldn't stop thinking about the "Kennedy promise," that intangible thing that this man had that gave an entire generation hope. The notion that we had this person or idea that would finally bring real change to our country - helping the least of our people, making our country a place to envy morally - and that this person, and his brother, and Dr. King were all taken from us far too early.
I looked at that picture and I did something I don't do often: I cried. I remembered that I was in Washington because I believed in a dream deferred too long. I wasn't there because of my resume, my credits, or my diploma; I came to feel as if I was doing something to make our country and world a better place, even if I was just preparing myself to do something along those lines. I looked at a man who ended up giving everything for his country, and asked my self what I could do.
I went on to do community service work at the UN, in the office of the United Nations Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery. I continued to expand my view of the world, and I looked to a future of public service. That fall, I worked on a local school board campaign and planted the seeds to follow in Biden's footsteps, running for county commissioner as a twenty-something.
While my focus thus far reached far beyond my town of 8,100 or my county commission district of 100,000, I had to pay attention to the changing landscape in my own backyard. Higher property values and gentrification were forcing socio-economic homogeneity onto my home of 13 years. The debate over where to build new schools allowed the local GOP to freeze the county's education system into a stasis devoid of progressive policy decisions. Out of control development put an unfair tax burden on our citizens, forcing the middle class out of Mecklenburg County. The same growth ran rampant, razing ranches for roads. Local Democrats were afraid to talk about impact fees (a.k.a. assessment fees), land transfer taxes, and other measures to curb development and grow responsibly. So I filed to run for county commissioner, ran a clean campaign that I was proud of, set the tone of the debate for the entire year, and raised awareness and strong public support for impact fees. I was defeated in the primary by a eleven-year town commissioner, though I lost by only 159 votes (55% to 45%).
Ever since, I've been taking the lessons I learned from that campaign to the streets as a democratic activist. I started blogging. I started talking about what I believed, and I became an organizer. I hooked up with team Kissell in the latter half of 2006, and I think almost everyone here knows that story ...
So, as a progressive, as a liberal, as a blogger - why am I supporting Joe Biden? Aside from the mild similarities, the amazing experience in his office, Irish-Catholic verisimilitude, and the like? Why not Obama, who shares both my experience as an organizer and who channels the "Kennedy thing" that touched me that day in the White House?
Well, it's not because I'm being pragmatic. Biden doesn't have the fame or the media coverage he had 20 years ago, even though he could destroy any of those Republicans in a general election. (and it's my firm belief that at least 5 in our top 6 would wipe the floor with the GOP in 2008). And sure, much of it is because I'm a foreign policy wonk who thinks that any United States President at this critical a moment in world history has to be qualified to be Secretary of State as well. We've experienced eight years of what "experts" and "consultants" can do for a foreign policy. Part of my support has to do with the fact that, in 2002, Biden had the second best tack on the war of our top 6 presidential candidates. I won't speak for other candidates, but I know a President Biden would not have gone to war with Iraq (if you don't believe me, research the Biden-Lugar IWR). I've seen his diplomatic finesse at work, and I believe.
Really, that's what it comes down to for all of us. We fight over candidates because for those of us that are die-hard supporters, we believe in our choice. It's not a rational choice. It's not usually a logical thing, it's a primal thing. It's a connection. Deep down, I think we know that most of the Democratic candidates have the potential to be great presidents, but we believe in our pick. I didn't feel that in 2004, I didn't understand some of the faithful Dean supporters in South Carolina in 2004, but I feel it now.
I believe in Joe Biden because he's a straight-talker. I think many of us - especially myself - can appreciate the infrequent lapses in tact that come with honesty. He doesn't have to promise me things he probably won't be able to deliver to give me hope. I believe in Joe because he's the best of both worlds to me - experienced, but not a D.C. resident for life. He grew up middle class, he experienced unimaginable hardships, and he's not nearly as wealthy as he should be at his station. He's been chairman of two illustrious Senate committees, but he's never met with a lobbyist. I believe in Joe because I've grown up, and it takes more than a saxophone and shades to impress me. I believe in Joe because he's made the sacrifices for his family that my family has had to make as my grandfather, grandmother and great-grandmother got sick and passed away over the last decade.
I believe in Joe because he acts like a man and stands up for his character and his loved ones - when he failed in 1988, he took the blame, he packed up and left Iowa gracefully, he survived a near-death experience and he became a better person. When he messed up at the beginning of this year, he took responsibility, learned from the mistake, and became a much better candidate because of it. More than any other candidate, he's the opposite of Dubya - instead of being a blue blood that pretends to be a normal guy, he's a normal guy that has to act like a senator. Instead of acting smarter than he is, you know he dumbs it down for the Sunday morning pedantry of MTP, FTN, and others. He builds character, he takes responsibility without putting out fifty press releases about it, he learns from his mistakes, and he knows how to make our friends around the world care about us again.
I believe in Joe because of all the times he's ended up being right (a few of the Democratic contenders seem to agree with me, though that's purely tongue-in-cheek). He was right on Iran, I believe that he's right on Iraqi federalism, he was right with Biden-Lugar, he was right when he put 100,000 cops on the street and supported community policing programs, and his belief in the 50-State Strategy reaffirms my belief in him.
I don't know what's going to happen with the next presidency. I'm not sure how big the grassroots movements for things like universal health care and fair trade are going to have to be so that the right representatives get elected to congress. I'm not sure what kind of leadership that's going to take, or if a president, alone, can make such big decisions for the entire Congress and the entire nation. Some things are too big for any person. I am sure, however, that Joe Biden would be able to reunite our countrymen and our allies around a sober, responsible, but courageous foreign policy. I believe a President Biden could build the political capital needed to pass progressive domestic reforms at home while growing our economy by exporting green technologies to neighbors like China and India that globalization draws ever closer. With Joe in the White House, I believe my grassroots side will have the freedom to pursue change. I believe that when I walk into the Capitol after the win, I will be in awe of an inspiring twain - our hallowed government and the power for change I can yield within it.
[The Senate] felt like a sacred place when I got there, and I've never lost that feeling. Thirty-five years later I still get goose bumps when I come out of Union Station and see the Capitol dome. - Joe Biden, Promises to Keep
I admit, I could be wrong about much of that. As I said, to a large part our presidential picks are predicated on passion more than reason, gut feelings as much as or more than good policy (though my confidence in Biden's ability to build an interdependent peace is as based in reason as it is in passion). So in light of that, without pretension, I believe in Joe Biden most of all because we see the same Washington. We see the same potential in Americans in spite of our flawed humanity and in spite of our flawed selves. Though Biden could get away with being arrogant if he wanted to, I wish I had his humility and his interpersonal acumen, though I don't think I could pay the price he paid for it.
Our presidential picks are our paladins, but they all fall short. Joe admits when he is lacking, and because of that he is able to be my standard-bearer. He is a choice that reconciles my persistent pragmatism with my long-shot idealism. I'm working for him now, so this is GBCW until he either wins the Presidency or bows out of the race. Many of us are putting our hearts and souls into the months ahead; now that I understand myself and my choice, I know that we can come together and laugh about it when this is all over.
May Peace be a lamp unto your feet and a light unto your path.
Happy Holidays from Sam and Joe!