THE PRESIDENT, ELECTED
But I couldn’t begrudge my brother his skepticism. I’d seen Obama up close, and he didn’t bowl me over. I’d heard him show up exhausted at a dinner and give a speech that everyone cheered wildly even though it had been really lousy. I’d winced at the precious Annie Leibovitz holiday card bulk-mailed to constituents a couple years ago. When he ran for his party’s nomination for the Senate in 2004, he didn’t get my vote. The fawning over him offended me: it was like nothing I’d seen since 1972, when Dan Walker, who’d issued a report calling the ’68 Democratic Convention a police riot, ran for governor and “reform” Democrats bailed on lieutenant governor Paul Simon (whose sin was accepting backing from party regulars). Not only did Walker wind up in prison after his single term, he was an ineffective governor for those four years and you could cut his administration’s self-regard with a knife.
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For those old enough to remember jim crow, it’s yesterday. During my senior year in J-school at the University of Missouri, things got particularly ugly in Alabama, and two editors from our student newspaper drove south to take a look and write some stories. Their audacity made me blink. It pointedly reminded the rest of us aspiring journalists that the life we’d chosen could be profoundly serious—it was about going into danger to act as the people’s witness.
A few weeks later, at a dinner party held by friends who are one degree of separation from Obama’s inner circle, the conversation turned to the mess this country’s in, and our hostess predicted Obama would accomplish things that would make his election look like small beer. I wasn’t so sure. A nation’s troubles come and go, and it’s hard for me to imagine anything Obama might do that would be more transformational than getting himself elected in the first place. The day he’s sworn in, I’ll still be rubbing my eyes.
