Centerfield

The Rally: An Obama Supporter's Perspective

Being an Obama supporter, I know you'll be utterly startled to hear I saw the rally rather different than poor ol' Tully did. I was surprised to see Obama back - this is his second rally in Austin; I was under the impression that candidates liked to spread out their appearances as much as possible. In fact, Austin Rally 2 seems to've been organized after Houston and San Antonio rallies, so I wonder if it was a near thing. Let me remind you that we couldn't go in person, so this is all based on watching his speech on TV.

When it was over, I asked the Profesora her opinions. She's undecided, but says she can't possibly vote the same way I do.... She said people seem to describe Obama much the same way as they described Clinton - charismatic, young, good, preacherly voice, "The Man From Hope."

I really feel sorry for Hillary for being on the wrong side of the campaign's great voice when running on her own. Like Mathew hoped, it was pretty good stuff. I wasn't tempted to go read a book, like I am when seeing Huckabee speak.

After reading and hearing many impractical-sounding sound bites and snippets on the Obama site and in the media, I was surprised how practical I felt the entire message was at rally length as a whole. It's true that hope has an emotional, frothy feeling, and that's his theme. But let's face it: plenty of our Presidents have inspired that feeling on their sides of the aisle. Plenty of people felt hope as responses to Reagan and Clinton on their respective sides. I daresay Tully felt that way about Reagan, while I felt about Reagan the same way Tully feels about Obama.

The an end to nasty politics bit, in long form, points out that Bush and many other politicians in DC love to see us live in fear, which is true. Aren't the terror alert levels, set with bureaucratic cowardice, an instrument of fear? Bush has never once pointed out the simple truth that the American people are able to stand up to fear without bureaucratic assistance. To me that's a terrible failing. Instead he's taken advantage of that fear to do more and more things to take away our rights. Did FDR tell people to fear just hope itself?

The notion of taking away American rights in times of potential existential crisis is well-established. There is and was a real, and hard problem out there, but the nation's existence is NOT threatened. Not so many Americans died on 9/11, and we didn't even get a recession on top of the already-extant crash. It was worth taking military action in Afghanistan and developing financial investigation tools, but where's the excuse for taking so many rights? Even for the bank group, why wasn't getting FISA-style court agreement for an agreeing judge so impractical, given that FISA allows retroactive permission? Time after time I've seen officials and their defenders fail to back their actions with the kind of facts I think democracy should demand for this kind of action. We see anecdotes, but never any data or reasonable explanation why doing it right is impractical. "Well, because you gotta! And eat your broccoli, young man!"

His version of health plan looks best to me because it's mostly just making another plan available and forces far fewer into it (I want to see a widely available plan available for the poor, but think it's unamerican to force people into it). I really, really, really wish somebody would tell truth on costs, but nobody's doing that. That's not on order from any side - Bush wasn't much interested in telling the real costs of his drug plan, was he?

Of the three major candidates, I think he understands both the economy and the Internet best; he must get the Internet, since he gets things done by blog. He's understands network neutrality and is for it. He understands the economy as well as politicians ever do, and the centrality of enterpreneurship, innovation, and high technology to our way of life and economy. I'd be happier, though, if he were less liable to talk about unlikely stupid economic plans like the outsourcing discouragement credit.

I want a President who will take the positive path instead of fear and more fear. It's certainly possible that he will follow in Bush' footsteps in sliding from a positive man who forwarded American rights and values and paid attention to ground reality to the opposite kind of man. Nobody is immune from corruption or the arrogance of success. But at least he pulled himself up by his own bootstraps, started an enterprise that didn't need Daddy's courtiers to waste $millions to keep afloat, and has had vastly more experience of contrasting cultures to give him extra perspective and character. I think he's likely to decay more slowly.