Obama and the better angels of Wisconsin's nature

An editorial  —  11/03/2008 5:41 am

At the close of his first inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln spoke to those who would divide the United States.

"We are not enemies, but friends," said the 16th president. "We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

Almost 150 years after Lincoln uttered those words, America is again divided.

The question that will be answered by voters on this first Tuesday in November is whether the land must remain divided.

Eight years of George Bush's tragically flawed presidency have strained the very fabric of the American experiment. Our debates about war and peace, taxes and spending, civil rights and civil liberties have developed bitter edges that suggest we are enemies: Democrat versus Republican, Red State versus Blue State, liberal versus conservative.

The banner-carrier of Lincoln's Republican Party in this fall's election, John McCain, has torn open holes in that fabric, exploiting the oldest and ugliest of our differences.

And yet most Americans are still touched by the better angels of our nature.

We still believe that this great nation can and should be what Lincoln imagined: "the last best hope of Earth."

That explains why Barack Obama's campaign for the presidency has been so successful — and why its success has become an imperative no less consequential than the success of other historic candidacies: Jefferson in 1800, Lincoln in 1860, Roosevelt in 1932.

It may be mere coincidence that Obama is, like Lincoln, an Illinoisan with a relatively short resume of electoral service.

The more cautious among us still suggest that to support Obama requires too great a leap of faith, just as it has always been suggested of young men who bid for the presidency before the established order judges it to be their time. But the American people have a history of understanding, as they did with Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy, that sound judgment and an ability to inspire often count for more than a long resume and the burden of knowing too much of what is not supposed to be achievable and too little of the infinite possibility of this unfinished American project.

Had he run a better campaign, John McCain would be a worthy adversary to Obama. He was a maverick once. After the most dangerous elements in his party took charge in the mid-1990s, McCain refused for a time to go along with those who sought to destroy the last vestiges of the party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower.

McCain entered the 2008 race with a reputation that was commendable, if imperfect. It is now tarnished beyond repair.

Obama's resume is shorter than McCain's, and imperfect in places. But it is precisely right for the American moment. As a community organizer in Chicago, Obama worked to save industrial jobs and the neighborhoods they sustain. As an Illinois state senator, he was an ardent advocate of that state's historic death penalty moratorium. As a contender for the U.S. Senate in 2002 and 2003, he marched with anti-war protesters. As a freshman senator, he worked with Wisconsin's Russ Feingold to promote sweeping ethics reforms. And as a presidential candidate, he has mounted a campaign distinguished by its optimism, its vigor, its appeal to the young and the previously disengaged, and its success in upending the calculations of those who thought they controlled our politics.

Everything about the Republican nominee's campaign suggests that a McCain presidency would be a continuation of the Bush era.

Everything about Obama's campaign suggests that he favors a bolder break with the failed politics and policies of the Bush interregnum.

Obama's is the politics of faith in the prospect of democratic renewal; of the worthy dream that a divided people might unite around common purposes and lower partisan barriers to make possible dramatic shifts in the way the United States relates to the world and to itself.

It is for that reason that so many Republicans — former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Susan Eisenhower, former Rhode Island Sen. Lincoln Chafee, former Iowa Congressman Jim Leach, former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld and former Wisconsin state Sen. Barbara Lorman, among them — have endorsed Obama.

McCain derides Obama as a "big talker" holding out false hope to worried Americans.

Obama responds, "This whole notion of false hopes bothers me. There is no such thing as false hopes."
Surely, Lincoln would have preferred Obama's hope to McCain's desperate denial of it. And so, it seems, will the voters of Wisconsin.

As Election Day finally arrives, it is right to speak of hope — a hope that America's Democrats, independents and Republicans will again embrace the better angels of our nature and support the candidacy of another young Illinoisan so that he can secure his claim on the presidency of a nation that is so ready to begin anew.

An editorial  —  11/03/2008 5:41 am