I'm trying to distill in my own mind what I really want in a candidate...to find the nugget that explains what I'm looking for, for this country.
What I found is so different from the rhetoric that comes out of Washington, that it sounds like something that would be shouted down in the Main Stream Media as being irrelevant or meaningless.
What I'm looking for is a conscience.
That's why in 2004, I liked Wes Clark's courage to respond to Ted Koppel's debate question about protecting our "interests" in the Middle East by saying "I don't need to steal my oil, I can buy it on the open market." That response was brushed under the rug because we don't dare talk about something that interferes with Exxon's right to pollute our air, risk a global environmental meltdown and reduce Iraq to rubble to get back their oil contracts or when it interferes with Humana's right to extract billions of dollars out of our health care system that might otherwise go to help insure 45 million people who just do without, burdening our emergency services.
That's why yesterday, for the first time, I volunteered for Barack Obama, calling Louisiana and why I will continue to work for his candidacy.
Last night, speaking in Virginia, Barack Obama thanked a few people including Jim Webb, saying that Jim "has a conscience". This morning, recalling Barack's speech, that recognition of conscience helped define for me what I'm really looking for and what I think perhaps is drawing a new generation of voters to Barack's candidacy in very large numbers, not seen since the sixties. But I think that the vast majority of all of us want to feel good about who we are and what we do. It's just that powerful interests callously use fear to try to thwart our sense of right and wrong.
If our leaders had had a conscience or the courage to listen to it they never would have brutalized the people of Iraq or brutalized our soldiers by sending them to Iraq. Some of them did, but not enough to make a difference.
I'm looking for leaders whose conscience guides their policy choices. Instead we have Wall Street's quarterly profits as our guiding mantra and cultural pressures that reward psychopathy. http://www.cassiopaea.org/...
The NY Times has this piece on how Bush is still pushing Congress around on responsible clean energy. http://www.nytimes.com/...
If the results had not been so horrific, it would be humorous to consider whether George W Bush succeeded ultimately in helping Exxon, Halliburton and the rest of the hangers on to finally shoot themselves in the foot, killing their goose that laid the golden egg. Much of Wall Street and a good chunk of corporate America wanted to have their cake and eat it too and gambled on Bush. He succeeded in proving beyond a shadow of a doubt to 70% of us and growing, that policies written by and for the financial enrichment of a tiny elite have devastated our economy and put us all at risk. Their policies have brought us to the brink of disaster and now, thanks to Bush's egregious violence and psychopathy "everybody knows" it. (Leonard Cohen http://www.lyricsfreak.com/... .
I attended the opening of the campaign headquarters for Barack Obama in Houston a few days ago. There was a standing room only crowd that overwhelmed the volunteers. The crowd was a microcosm of America, diverse in every sense of the word, including a woman who drove from a neighboring county and was one of two who acknowledged that they were Republicans. The crowd cut across all of our superficial ethnic, racial and religious divides. The most poignant moment was when one of the young volunteers who had been traveling the country for Barack said that she sees above these artificial divides to where we are all one in our hopes for a better future.
I believe that perhaps the young people who have been energized by Barack Obama have been searching for a candidate who inspires us to work together in the belief that we can feel good about who we are and what we stand for. Where public policy serves a conscionable, sustainable future for all of us.
By making the extreme case against it, Bush has shown us the value of our inborn sense of right and wrong that is a large part of our humanity and makes life worth living, giving us our dignity and self-respect.
Barack Obama has emerged as the candidate who I believe offers us the chance to indulge our sense of right and wrong and our humanity to their fullest. The other day he spoke of education as something other than a tool to help children test well but a source of personal enrichment, including the study of music, art and poetry.
Much to the chagrin of Exxon, I'm sure, we really are not machines whose sole purpose is to fatten their profits, but we're really a pretty noble species when we have the chance to live up to our highest ideals.
Thanks Bush for proving to so many of us that to survive we must rein in the corporate psychopaths instead of indulging them. It's been a long slow struggle over decades, but you've taught us a lesson and helped unite a growing majority in search of a more enlightened path.
And Barack Obama is the candidate who has emerged as the one who I believe best embodies this hope for the future and our humanity.