Obama Nation

#379 Obama Nation

Barak Obama, contestant for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination held a rally on the campus of Party State University in Midlanowhere County, Pennsylvania, and he was joined by an estimated 22-thousand close friends. If the election were held today and only here, this guy would be in the White House tomorrow. Too bad we have to wait for November. If he's nominated.

Bill Clinton was here the other day, too. Drew about eight thousand supporters for his wife's presidential candidacy. Not bad, considering that the hall in which he spoke has a capacity of six thousand. And it was a weekday evening. Still, Obama won in crowd count, almost three-to-one.

Maybe this was just a screwup and not a lie. Sen. Obama and several others were described in the local paper's website as having played a game of basketball before the rally. Said game was described as having taken place on the floor of the university's largest indoor concert and athletic venue, a place with a pretty name, the "Bryce Jordan Center," named for a guy named Bryce Jordan who isn't even dead yet.

Said venue is jammed to the rafters with the members of the local builders' association, holding its annual show, and crammed with booths pitching everything from houses to electrical and concrete and kitchen counter and mortgage hawkers. The booths are so tightly packed, there's scarce room for visitors (who paid five bucks a head) to wander around.

So, maybe they got it wrong. Or maybe the Obama campaign just lied to the paper, which would be less of a lie than, say, Hillary Clinton describing her landing in the Balkans as "under fire." Lying about basketball is less of a lie than lying about bullets.

Obama wants semi-universal health care. He wants to zap Bush's tax decreases for the rich and to reward the rest of us. He wants to get us out of Iraq forthwith. This is pie in the sky baloney. None of that's going to happen. So what? That the guy wants it is good enough. It's a tone-setter. It means things will get better, just not completely better. It's all we can hope for and all we should expect.

The most important single function of the President of the United States is nowhere in the Constitution. The President sets the tone. He or (gulp!) she sets the country's tone. We need someone who's tone-setting focuses on the ordinary American, not the corporate chieftain. We need someone who sets the tone about shared responsibility, instead of dog-eat-dog capitalism. We need someone who reminds us that what makes this country great is its institutionalized bootstrapping. We need someone who can remind us by his presence that we can do better than we've done under Reaganism and Bushism and even Clintonism.

If we don't elect this guy, we deserve what we get instead.

I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.®
©WJR 2008