It was almost five in the afternoon on an unusually warm fall day, when I was lugging my Trader Joe’s bag down the street to our Cobble Hill apartment. Having just seen about six Obama supporters, festooned in their most clever urban political garb, my own measly pin barely making the cut, I grinned while passing the young, eager faces in front of Starbucks, “Have a minute for Barack Obama?” (which is a far less difficult question to answer than, “Have a minute for children’s rights? Or for the environment?; at least the wrong answer here just makes you politically backward not morally depraved).I turned to the couple next to me, walking in an embrace as if posing for a Brooklyn tour book; “they’re preaching to the choir”, I hummed. “They should spend their time in a place where it will actually make a difference.”By the time I got to my corner, a whopping two minutes later, I reflected on what I’d just said. The truth is: I have all the time in the world for Barack Obama. And despite the fact that I am:
- contributing already to the Obama campaign
- schlepping a very cumbersome grocery bag while six months pregnant
- fantasizing about the dill pickles I just bought
I still contemplated stopping and seeing what they wanted. Money, I assumed. And why not throw another 10 bucks his way? And this is what makes his campaign so brilliant. I am no economist, as I have said before. But I know a good sales pitch when I see one. The Obama campaign knows that people care more now than they probably ever have. Besides my parents’ generation, who still glance up dreamily when asked about the days of JFK and RFK, most voters today are energized by what enervates them. Myself included.And while some may slow at the finish line, Obama pulls a Michael Johnson. Or a Michael Phelps as it were these days. As a teacher, there are few greater life lessons one can bestow upon her students: tenacity has its reward. It may sound cliché, but let’s be frank here: he’s young, he’s agile, he’s believable and he’s inspiring. Like Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets, he makes us want to be better men…and women.
It doesn’t hurt that his campaign is run like the Google Board of Directors were in charge of the German train system. From educators to engineers, he has ingratiated himself with people who run one hell of a campaign. I’m not sure who wants it more these days: him or us.
Which is why a sometimes slightly disenchanted, disheartened, pregnant school teacher who’s lost 1/3 of her scant retirement fund and plans to raise a baby in a one room apartment, indeed has a minute for Obama.
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Excellent piece, Rita! Gobama!
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