SCDems News
The necessary ingredient for success: hope
July 21, 2008
"Until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words — 'Wait and hope.'"
— Alexandre Dumas,
The Count of Monte Cristo
If you want to excel in sports, the coaches will tell you to picture success in advance.
Basketball players look up at the hoop before a free throw and try to put past misses out of their heads. Golfers are told to look past that pond in front of the green and visualize hitting a smooth shot that settles near the cup. Put failure out of your mind completely and focus only on success, sports psychologists say.
Now look at our politics today. Who's visualizing success for America today?
The answer's so obvious that it seems a leading question: Sen. Barack Obama.
Sen. Obama moved into the lead in the Democratic race by talking effusively about the need for hope, the fact that America can regain the feeling of hope that defined it before the world. The media — a crowd of curmudgeons, old and young — too often has focused on his considerable rhetorical skills over his message. But he has succeeded because his message touches such a deep American chord. If he were peddling pessimism, he wouldn't be at the head of such a political movement.
As the Democratic primary has turned into such a slog, he has been criticized as a neophyte who is just selling sunshine. He's not ready to get anything done in the Washington snake pit, voters have been told. His hopeful refrain has been portrayed, in a neat bit of political judo, as a weakness. We need more seasoned heads in Washington, the argument goes, to get things done.
That attack, however, undervalues what he's offering in his candidacy. Hope is not some frivolous springtime mood, irrelevant to politics. Hope is an essential confidence about success in the future. It provides the energy to push our system, which is designed to move only after due deliberation, to do better.
Hope is a quintessentially American frame of mind. It's at the heart of what we refer to with the "American Dream" cliche, that someone can start with little here and have the opportunity to build a successful life.
Washington is so change-resistant that it's an act of hope to venture in. Only a leader coming in with momentum can aspire to change things; hope provides that momentum.
Sen. Obama's inspiration of political hope is especially important because of who he is, and where America is now, politically. As an African-American who could become president, he offers redemption and reconciliation for the sins of America's past. Even folks who don't agree with him politically have seen the potent messages inherent in his candidacy. He had to be the candidate of inspiration and hope: Why else would anyone believe he had a chance to be nominated?
Politically, he has adopted a tone of reconciliation that runs into the wind of our partisan political culture. Voters, it seems, are ready to hear his message — especially those who have stayed away from politics before. The Obama campaign's success is a welcome repudiation of the idea that candidates must appeal exclusively to a party's base to win in a primary — and Sen. John McCain's followers can say the same thing.
It's quite ironic that now the Obama campaign is being asked to justify how much distance the senator put between himself and the longtime pastor at his church, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The rhetoric from Rev. Wright that has caused the Obama campaign so much grief represents the very anger and frustration that his campaign rejects. He is asked to apologize for exactly the role that he decided not to play. There's a reason he called his book The Audacity of Hope, after all.
Sen. Obama's different approach has been obvious from early on. It took many in the African-American community a while to warm to him, because of his quick ascension into national politics and also because he was a different operator. He didn’t have extensive contacts within such groups as the NAACP, and he didn't build his campaign along traditional networks. His rhetoric, too, was different: African-Americans worried early on if he was the forceful leader they sought. His tone was less confrontational, with his eye clearly on a broad spectrum of voters.
Some black leaders were put off by how different he is. Now, with the Wright controversy, he has to defend that difference. In this way, Sen. Obama's political critics turn his asset, hope, against him. Pretty slick political move.
The Wright episode hasn't damaged Sen. Obama yet, at least if polls can be believed. And I think the more people hear from him, the contrast with the Rev. Wright's fiery rhetoric will be sharp.
In 2008, America needs a strong dose of hope from its politics, which have been a source of gloom for years. Cynicism, partisanship and big-bucks lobbying have led to a government that does too little, as big issues go unaddressed. That's no fun to cover as a journalist, and brings no satisfaction to suffer through as a citizen, either. In this election year, I hope for better.
The State
