Leadership

I just may as well get this out of the way now. At this period in our history as Americans, an Obama presidency is the best thing that can happen to us. We can't erase what the last 8 years have done to our international influence or our domestic self loathing, but we can completely change direction with a 180 phase change in leadership. We can go from being manipulated and divided by fear, to being inspired and motivated to heal our country.

There will always be the intolerant psycho alienated right that somehow thinks we aren't all in this boat together. This contingent will arm itself proudly in defense of that sacred and widening gap that lies between those that have and those that don't. These people are outnumbered. If the rest of us can realize that the right doesn't give a damn about you, then we can take the next step. Next would be to realize that your own sensibilities are being exploited in order to manipulate you. An Obama presidency can help to free some of us from the ties that link our spirituality to our vote. Those remaining would be the manipulators, and the happily manipulated.

Obama could be the first president in recent years to be elected by virtue of what he IS, rather than his polarity on whatever the wedge issue of the day is. Anyone having spent a day and an hour in the military knows than an effective leader is one that commands with respect rather than fear. Nothing but jeers and rolling eyes greet the man that refers to himself as the decider, but a battered America should embrace a leader that actually IS a uniter.

Unfortunately, the more I see and read out there the more I realize that America is far from ready for Obama. Hell, the Dems aren't even ready for him. As long as we continue to define a person by where he comes from over what he IS, we will be subject to the poor leadership of the officials we select. As long as we allow the religious right to make "liberal" a bad word while Jesus was a liberal, we will continue to lose the war of words. As long as the guy that calls intolerance as he sees it is battered to be seen as worse than the actually intolerant, we can't get any closer to accepting a candidate like Obama. The first step towards resolving some problem is to identify it, and we aren't even brave enough to do that.

Hopefully 8 more years of decline under damaged leadership will get us ready to accept what Obama has to offer, but I'm afraid we are much further gone than that. This is coming from a pathological optimist that is holding onto the hope that he is wrong.