Michelle Obama said today that this is the first time in her adult life that she is proud of her country. Pundits are going ballistic. Pat Buchanan said the comment was "like a stab to the (gut)." The consensus appears to be that the comment was at best a gaffe, and at worst a really terrible, unimaginable slap in the face to patriotic Americans everywhere.
I disagree.
Let's take a look at what has happened in America over the last 25 years. We suffered through Ronald Reagan, George the First and George the Last. We've listened to Rush and his legion of imitators take over radio. We've watched, enraged and frustrated while the Congress was hijacked by creeps like Phil Gramm, Tom Delay, and Newt Gingrich. We've suffered through Iran-Contra, the Savings and Loan Bailout, $100 dollar a barrel oil, ruinous foreign policies, the disaster of 9/11, and the launch of the least moral war in our history. We've heard a Democratic President lie, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman...."
As a late baby-boomer, my greatest regret today has been that my generation, which began by giving its soul to, and risking ridicule or worse in the civil rights, peace and women's movements, which revolutionized music and art, and which started our adult lives as practicing idealists, has become a generation of "me-first," "you-never" apologists for a generation of Democratic leaders that sold our ideals down a polluted river of electoral gamesmanship. To be frank, compared with the ideals we started with, we have done very little to be proud of. We have elected very few people we can be proud of.
So, I know somewhat how Michelle Obama feels - only, really I don't, because I'm not from the Chicago South Side, nor am I a person of color. I've not had to feel the disappointment or rage of seeing the pre-eminent leaders in Washington of my race be Clarence Thomas, who thinks he got where he is on his own; or Condoleeza Rice, who, having the chance to influence the inner circle of government leadership to consider sanity as a policy, chose to listen to intellectually bankrupt ideology; nor Colin Powell, who had the good sense to see Iraq as the morass it would become, but held his tongue at precisely the wrong time. I haven't had to live as a black person in a country that has turned its back on affirmative action, which has allowed our inner cities to become war zones, which defeated busing and other tools of integration and where immigrants are abused casually on TV for sport.
Now, however, America is waking up. Old boomers like me have been roused from our stupor, and voters are taking the same plunge Barack asked Michelle to take, to believe in the promise of hope, to believe in him. Having worked harder on this campaign than any other (and I've worked on a lot....) and having put more money into it than I really have, I'm proud to see Americans of all ages and all ethnicities voting en masse for a new chance to give America back it's soul, something many of us tried to do once long ago, but failed.
It's the first time since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 that I've really been proud of America.
And I'm not sorry if it gives Pat Buchanan a gut ache.
Update
The quote should be
Michelle Obama said today that this is the first time in her adult life that she is REALLY proud of her country.
As has been pointed out by others here, the distinction is vital to her meaning.
-Dave