In 2000, I supported Gore, although he, like Dukakis, like Mondale, was a better man than he was a candidate. It was painful to watch the debates between him and Bush, with Bush stumbling over simple sentences and Gore tetchy and schoolmarmish. I didn't hold my nose when I voted for Gore, but I wasn't terribly enthusiastic about it. Bush horrified me from the very beginning. And hey, does anybody remember the John McCain of 2000? That guy might have had a shot. I remember seeing him on SNL in 2002 and thinking "Hey, this guy isn't so bad, if he had run against Gore that would have been a real contest."

In 2004, I was a big fan of Howard Dean. He was the closest I'd seen in my life to a real Democrat, someone presenting a clear alternative to the conservative agenda. I watched, confused, as the TV people played the "Yeeearrrgh" clip over and over -- for the life of me, I couldn't see what was so funny or sad or humiliating or whatever the hell they were trying to tell me it was supposed to be. What I did see is the Democrats toss Dean overboard in order to pick a candidate, John Kerry, who, in the end, on the issues, just wasn't that different from George W. Bush. He wasn't a clear alternative, it was like the Democrats, given the opportunity to offer a choice between Coke and Pepsi, offered a choice between Coke and New Coke. It didn't help that Kerry was an intensely boring candidate, thorough but plodding, constantly talking to us as though there was going to be a test at the end of the speech.

It didn't help my mood that the Republicans stole both elections.

I won't steer you through a recollection of the Bush II years. Presumably, anyone in my readership old enough to read this is already aware of the humiliating, unmitigated disaster that has been visited upon us in the past eight years. But I offer you this:

How trusting am I? How lasting is my childhood instruction of government being a good thing? Here's how trusting, how naive, how gullible I am:

Right after 9/11, Bush made a big speech to the Congress and Senate. I didn't watch the speech because I cannot stand watching Bush mangle the language I love. I did, however, read the text the next day in the newspaper and found myself pleasantly surprised -- Bush said everything I would expect a real president to say, he was tough, practical and caring.

Of course, he was also lying through his teeth.

How trusting am I?

Shortly after 9/11, I got involved in a flame war with a rather famous, outspoken liberal commentator. This commentator, who is known for being an arrogant prick as petty and vindictive as the day is long, warned me: just wait, you'll see, Bush is going to use 9/11 as an excuse to shred the constitution, demolish the Bill of Rights, start costly, unnecessary wars and ruin the US's standing in the eyes of the world. I know, I know -- real tinfoil-hat stuff, right? I said to this arrogant prick: look, we don't know what Bush is going to do, if he does those things, we can complain about that then, but ranting about it now isn't going to do us any good.

Well, the arrogant prick was not only right, he was, if anything, timid and conservative in his estimation of the horrors Bush would inflict upon the US. (Although he's still a petty, vindictive prick -- being right hasn't changed his personality.)

How gullible am I?

Like millions of people, I was against the Iraq war. I knew it had nothing to do with Osama bin Laden, I knew it had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction. Like millions of people, I marched in protest against it (one coordinated worldwide rally signified the single largest protest in human history, yet to this day I keep seeing conservative pundits on the TV saying "Hey, if the liberals didn't want this war, how come no one ever said anything?"). Well, Bush wanted his war and so we went to war, and yet, even then, even then, as the war was prosecuted so very, very poorly, even then I still didn't judge -- I said, well, he's the president, surely, surely he must know something about geo-politics I do not, surely this can't be as simple as I'm making it out to be, there must be, somehow, some kind of positive outcome to all this that will eventually be revealed.

America in the past eight years has become a nation of thugs and bullies. Those with the most demand more, and so the middle class becomes poorer and the poor are left to wither and die. In business, those with power have ruthlessly and shamelessly exploited those without. Where did they get the idea that this is okay? From our leadership in Washington, obviously. Bush has ruled with corruption and greed unparalleled in modern times, and has thus dictated that corruption and greed are the proper order of things. Why obey the law if the president does not? Republicans have told us, over and over, have shown by example, that the ends justify the means, that hard work and intelligence are for suckers, that there is nothing to be gained by obeying the law, that the only goal in life is to get as much as you can for yourself, brutalize and intimidate anyone who gets in your way, and screw everyone else.

When did I finally wake up? When did Toto finally pull aside the curtain to reveal the pale and spineless wizard pulling the levers?

When New Orleans was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, this picture showed up in the news:



It shows Bush in Air Force One, flying over New Orleans, theoretically surveying the damage and doing his best to look "concerned."  But what I see in his sheepish glance to the camera is a little boy saying "Can I go now? I've looked at the flooded city, can I go now?" I was astounded. A major American city had just been destroyed on his watch, and this photo was the best he could do to come with an answer.

His actions throughout that week only backed up the photo, as he blithely stumbled about, cheerful and smiling, patting the back of the total fucking idiot he had put in charge of FEMA as corpses floated in the Mississippi and the Superdome was turned into a charnel house. I was horrified -- horrified that a president would be not only utterly, obscenely incompetent, but also completely uncaring about the utter destruction of a major American city. Pleased, even, as if this were just another bold victory for his domestic agenda. Because, in effect, it was a victory for his domestic agenda: he had succeeded in taking everything he could from the poor of New Orleans, and God had stepped in, as Bush is convinced God always steps in, to complete the task of eradicating those poor from the face of the earth. I watched, nauseated, as Republican politicians examined video of the devastation and began openly speculating about where they could put a casino or a hotel or an Applebee's.

Over that weekend, Bill O'Reilly, the bilious, conservative clown, broadcast an editorial on Katrina. He sneered contemptuously at the victims of the flood, and boldly proclaimed that it is not the government's responsibility to help flood victims, it is the flood victims' responsibility to go to college and get a good job so that they don't wind up living in a ghetto in a city below sea level. The stark cruelty of his tirade, his rage, rage, against the poor and helpless, against the wounded and the dead, was an utter shock to me. Later that day I was talking to a naturalist friend of mine (her specialty is orangutans), and I recounted the O'Reilly outburst, and I said "Good lord, if it's not the government's responsibility to help out when a city is destroyed by a natural disaster, what the hell is it good for?" My friend looked at me as though I was perhaps a freshly hatched chick, and said "But Todd, don't you know? That's the conservative philosophy -- you pay them taxes so that they can fight foreign wars, and you get nothing in return."

No. I hadn't know that. That's what I get for not completing my college education. But now I know. George Bush has taught me. Made it clear as day.

So, when Bush strutted around the ruins of New Orleans looking like the cat who got the cream, that was the reason -- Katrina wasn't a disaster for him, it was a vindication that the system works. De-fund social services, gut spending on infrastructure, dismantle government offices, and in the end poor people will die and you can take the land they were on and build something profitable there. Kanye West famously said "George Bush doesn't care about black people," but he, alas, didn't take it far enough -- George Bush hates black people and wants them to die miserable deaths, if it will advance his agenda.

When I moved to California in early 2006, I had to register to vote again, and finally, at long last, I registered as a Democrat. And now I look back at my years as an Independent voter with a kind of bemused wonder: how could I have been so naive, so trusting, so gullible to see the Republican philosophy as anything but corrupt, cruel, brutal, selfish and the opposite of democracy? So, for what it's worth, that was one of George W. Bush's great accomplishments -- he turned me into a life-long, dyed-in-the-wool Democrat.

Coincidentally, Katrina marked the end of my reliance on cable networks for my news. It began as a purely practical problem: Katrina was a story too vast and complicated, the cable networks couldn't cover it all. And so I turned to political blogs, which were being updated constantly throughout the day, sites like Huffpo and Kos and Americablog, to get the latest from the ground in New Orleans. And you can say those blogs are biased, because they are, but I find that, at the end of the day, I am quite a bit better informed about issues than I was when I was watching CNN. Reading the blogs made me realize what a shrill, hollow sham TV news has become.

And this has been discussed widely, but it comes down to this: a cable network doesn't care if something is "true" or not, they only care about if people are watching their show instead of someone else's. And so, to lure eyeballs, they manufacture controversy. A Republican will state that down is up, and it will be reported on the news as: "Congressman So-And-So stated today that down is up. Is this true? Here to discuss the issue is physicist Guy Smartman and Republican strategist Dickwad Bloviator." And then they give each side equal time to discuss the issue and pat themselves on the back for doing a good job. Because to them, they have done a good job: they have delivered the controversy -- the drama -- that will keep people watching their show. The fact that their philosophy has served the Republican agenda is beside the point.

And so, for five years I was told, over and over, by the national media, that, all appearances to the contrary, George W. Bush is, in fact, a very serious man, a brilliant man even, with America's best interests at heart, someone who was trying very hard to steer the ship of state through perilous waters at the dawn of a confusing and dangerous new century.

_____


Anyway, so this new guy shows up. And his name is Barack Obama. And he gives a speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, and he strikes me as intelligent and likable. But right off I think, well, if people couldn't vote for Mario Cuomo because of his "funny name," there is no way they'll ever vote for a guy with a name like Barack Obama.

And the 2008 primaries roll around, and I note that Obama is running for the Democratic nomination for president. And somewhere in the back of my mind I think "Well, that would be cool if he did well in the primaries, I like him." I think maybe he would make a good running mate for Hillary Clinton.

Then this speech comes along:



and its elegant, sentimental music-video distillation by will.I.am:



And I realize, instantly, that Obama is going to be the next president. There is no question in my mind.

Don't get me wrong -- I like Hillary Clinton, I think she's an excellent candidate: she's a smart, canny insider who would know how to get things done for "our side" in Washington. I would have gladly voted for her in November, and part of me wishes she had been Obama's running mate.

But this Obama guy, I see immediately, is in a whole other league.

In the closing minutes of this speech, Obama takes a needle and runs a thread of American optimism and defiance through 200 years of history from Philadelphia in 1776 to Martin Luther King in 1968. He puts the whole picture together, he presents a vision of America that is the antidote to everything that's happened since 1980.

The rapturous, slack-jawed amazement that Obama followers register when talking about their candidate does not come from only from his physical presence, his charisma or his oratorical skills. We are so moved by Obama because, for the past 30 years, we have been told that up is down, that good is bad, that smart is stupid, that caring is wrong, that the law is irrelevent. And now here comes a candidate that has lived in that world beside us and has seen it for what it is.

Think of that -- living in a world where, for thirty years, you are told that everything you believe to be true is wrong, that every principle you hold dear -- compassion, equality, even simple, garden-variety decency -- is wrong. Now imagine waking from that nightmare, when someone your own age appears and says, in words you've heard inside your head for thirty years but couldn't speak, or spoke but found them landing on deaf ears, or heard mocked in the media and reported to you as the rantings of a lunatic. And this person comes to you, not at a party or on the street, not in an art gallery or museum, but from the platform of a national stage, and says "No, it's not just you, I've been here too, I saw the same things you saw, I saw the same America you saw, and it's not just me either, I've been traveling around this country for years now and it's everyone. There are millions upon millions of us, of all races and colors, and for thirty years we've been told that we don't count, that our ideas, our hopes and dreams, are meaningless, that we simply don't matter. For thirty years we've been told that only rich people matter, for thirty years we've been told that the law is an impediment to power, for thirty years we've been told that morality is for suckers.

Obama reminds us that the United States is supposed to stand for something besides greed, cruelty, brutality and selfishness, that there is an idea contained within in the notion of government for the people, of the people and by the people, and that idea is the opposite of what the Republicans have done to this country since Reagan.

When Michele Obama said that she was proud of America for the first time in her adult life, she was mercilessly mocked and ridiculed for her lack of patriotism. But I knew exactly how she felt -- when Barack Obama won the nomination of the Democratic party, it was the first time I was proud of America too. And so, for the first time, I am able to vote not against someone, but for someone.