Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Hope

Oh me of little faith. "The hope of a secure and livable world," Martin Luther King wrote, "lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace, and brotherhood." I had prepared a column very lengthy about how the exigencies of actually being President of the United States probably require fatal compromises with personal ethics. But after eight years of the self-interested, self-serving, and terminally self-righteous Clintons; and after eight more years of "W", who, until the arrival of Sarah Palin, represented the apotheosis of the crass, crude, and transparently pandering populism of the modern Republican Party, I find that President-elect Barack Obama offers something that no political leader has for a long time: a glimmer of hope. Hope that he might be the Real Thing. One of those disciplined nonconformists, dedicated to justice, peace, and brotherhood. And he just might be. We shall see. 

1 comment:

Graham Broad said...

Hope diminished yesterday when Obama, at a press conference, got testy with a reporter who called him out on the fact that he, Obama, had said that Hilary Clinton did not have much foreign policy experience. Obama was completely evasive and rather angry to have his own words thrown back at him. So...what happened? Did he change his mind about Clinton? Sigh.