Breakfast with Senator Obama in Beverly Hills
Tue Feb 20, 2007 at 12:12:07 PM PDT
As I waited for the valet to return my car at the Beverly Wilshire after a fund-raising breakfast with Senator Barack Obama, I talked briefly to the guy standing beside me. We agreed that we had both seen and heard everything that we had hoped for, and then some, that Barack Obama could be the transformational candidate that our country needs so badly.
" And I really don't think Hillary could win," said the guy, who will remain nameless. "It's not that", I replied, "I don't think any Republican could win." "Yes, but can you imagine Giuliani winning?" "No," say I, "But I can imagine a race between Clinton and Giuliani where we all lose."
And that, really, is why I believe we need Barack Obama as our next President.
To backtrack a little, it's still bizarre that I attended an intimate fund-raising breakfast in Beverly Hills and paid $2300.00 for the privilege. I've never traveled in the moneyed crowd, and especially not with the folks who bundle big dollar contributions. There's was a surreal Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail quality to the experience, especially as I listened to NPR and heard Mara Liasson and Chris Lehane talk about Senator Obama's trip to California, with typically vapid conversation about Hollywood money and fund-raising.
While I have a certain reluctance to gossip about what goes on in private functions, I was given a mission by Senator Obama, as were the other sixty peopled in the room, to be part of a viral campaign that would share his message and my belief in his candidacy, and it doesn't get any more viral than a DK diary.
I was one of several hundred select people who were invited to attend a Dreamworks guys dinner tonight, obviously based on my attendance at a big dollar Kerry lunch in 2004. I also had a choice, for the same price, to attend more intimate events at lunch and dinner, but could really only fit the breakfast into my schedule.
All six ten-person tables were filled, although there wasn't a star in sight. ( I was really hoping for Larry David ) As far as I could tell, most of the attendees were from the business or legal communities of LA, and they were basically there because they wanted to see and hear for themselves, and judge the candidate.
Like me, and most Kossacks, they want to believe in a candidate with a positive vision for change. They just happen to be ones with a lot of money.
I decided to give early money to some candidate this cycle, and my 21 year old son convinced me that Obama was the only candidate with the potential to change the country in a fundamental way, so you pays your money, and you takes your cherce.
As a cynic, I was prepared to be disappointed. How could this slender, humble freshman Senator from Illinois live up to the audacity of my hope - the dream that we might find a national leader who could suck the venom from our snakebit country? As I was driving down Wilshire, I wished that "Who's Next" was in the CD changer, yet settled for Bob Marley's "Redemption Song".
I wasn't disappointed. Instead, I came away exhilirated.
After Senator OBama worked the room, talking personally to each of the attendees, he spoke about the campaign. His eloquence was not oratorical, but instead a humble, thoughtful, intelligent discourse about our country and the campaign that he has been called to run. In words foreshadowed, yet never completely articulated by my hero Howard Dean, Barack Obama spoke about being a vehicle, a vessel for a longing that he had observed in Americans, and especially in younger Americans whose entire political life has been one of poison and cynicism.
The Senator was not anxious to run for President. He could easily have completed a term in the Senate, gone back to Illinois to easily win a Governor's seat, and be a young candidate for President in ten years.
Yet as he traveled during 2006, campaigning for other Democrats, he heard and felt the better spirit, the generosity and goodness of the American people, tuning out the hatred and looking for a transformation in our political climate. He has been convinced that he is the only candidate who can effect that change, that the time is so compelling, that the turning point is so important, that he needs to be the vehicle of this hope.
He's not running against the other candidates. He is running against cynicism, and against the administration that filled the void created when fear and cynicism triumphed.
Senator Obama talked about policy, and about process, and his major goals for reconstituting America's role in the world, beginning a process to fix our health care system, and moving to a sustainable economy where we aren't held hostage by our dependence on oil. He answered questions, and gave the kind of answers that I have always wanted to hear from an American President.
But what he really talked about, and what every person in the room paid to hear, was about transformation of our political system.
In re-reading this diary, I know I'm only capturing a part of what I saw, heard, and felt this morning, but Barack Obama was compelling in a way that we haven't seen since Bobby Kennedy was shot, and it is genuine in a way that give me hope for this country, for the first time in a long time.
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