I wrote the following in an e-mail on the Friday after Super Tuesday in a letter to another Obama supporter. Tonight I copied it into another e-mail. I realized I'd been thinking and writing alot about Obama lately. I was finally ready to begin blogging.
Here's how it all began.
As a pro-choice woman, it wasn’t an easy decision. It started when I picked up Obama’s first book last year and read it, and liked what I read, especially his attitude towards Republicans and Democrats, and religion, and family. A man with a demanding career, who appreciates the sacrifices that a woman with a career makes in a two-career household, and will actually talk about it -- well, it’s rare.I liked that he was a constitutional lawyer. I’d just finished a fantastic CD course on the SupremeCourt history that made me think that understanding that history would make for a much better President.I talked to some Brits when we were there on vacation, and they confirmed that Clinton has a good reputation internationally, and they were surprised I was considering voting for anyone else. That gave me pause. But then, the international community was amused by the Bill Clinton affair – how could the Americans be so … high-minded? Well, I’m sorry, but we have a history of being morally high-minded, going back to the Puritans. We have huge segments that are morally conservative, in the South, and in the Catholic communities, both white and Latino. It’s just rude to snub your nose at all those people by philandering in the White House. You don’t have to agree with someone’s moral position to be respectful of it, particularly if you’re supposed to be representing them to the world!The idea of putting Bill Clinton anywhere near the White House made me uncomfortable. I don’t think Hillary can keep him under control – just look what happened in South Carolina. [He mounted a campaign against Obama that ended up backfiring on Hillary.]All the while, I was getting e-mails and mailings from Emily’s List asking for money, talking about how we needed to support Clinton, since she was the Democratic candidate. I like the idea of providing financial support to women candidates in government, so I joined Emily’s List a few years ago. However, the tone of the mailings was very us vs. them, pitting women against men. I’m sorry, but I just don’t think that way anymore. My “life work” is teams, breaking through the us versus them attitudes, and getting people to work together.
I talked to my mother, and she told me she was going to vote for Clinton. Obama was just too inexperienced. I’m hip to that, but I work for a company that talks to successful startups run by twenty-somethings all the time. Inexperienced people are doing amazing, innovative, successful things. Plus, look at Jimmy Carter and the success that he had, and is still having, making world a better place, overseas and in the U.S.. And he didn’t know how to “do Washington” – Obama’s ahead of Carter in that department. As inexperienced as Carter was, he did successfully project a new image to the rest of the world, something I think that we badly need again today.Then I talked to a Democrat at work to find out who she was voting for, and found out she was voting for Obama. She talked about her decision, and how she was trying to figure out how to tell her son that she wasn’t going to vote for the woman. In her mind, Obama was the better candidate. I realized that I had been wondering how I would explain to my daughter as well, and took comfort that another mom had come to the same conclusion that I had, and was wrestling with the same concern.Finally, as I was headed to the polling place from work, listening to NPR, they were interviewing an 84-year-old black woman Democrat who had voted earlier that day. She said that she was pleased to be able to make such a historical vote – that either vote would be historical – but she had voted for Obama. Funny enough, that cinched it for me. Voting for Obama would be historic. His values aligned with my values. He seems to be the right person to put at the helm after so many years of Bush and Clinton.All that was before I voted. Then, after I came home from voting, I ended up on my computer, looking at voting results for South Carolina (Go Obama!). Somewhere along the way, I tripped over this link:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVuMYKs8iJswhich led me to women.barackobama.com. I loved what I read there. It supported so much about my decision. And I really loved the pieces they had about what happened in South Carolina, especially the one about the chants “Race Doesn’t Matter!” in response to the Clinton video.
Whoever would have guessed that I'd be writing my own blog, just a few weeks later.
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