Room for a leap of faith

I have decided to support Sen. Barack Obama for president for this reason: Of the three candidates, Obama is the only one who gives the citizens of this country room to take a leap of faith.

Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. John McCain are running campaigns for the single purpose of getting elected. I believe that, once elected, whatever I might have liked about the campaign picture they may have painted for America in 2009-12 will disappear like runoff after a heavy rain, and there will remain the status quo. The people can count on that. It is a conviction I cannot shake.

I have no such conviction about Barack Obama. His talk is mostly to the people, and not to the other candidates. His famous race relations speech, after the other candidates attacked his relationship to his controversial minister, transcended not only the candidates’ attacks, but the candidates, the campaign, and politics itself. In that 45 minutes, Obama laid before a national audience a simple depth of thought and understanding that is not obtainable by Clinton or McCain.

Last week Obama was talking to people again, wealthy voters at a fundraiser in San Francisco, who asked him for some background on Pennsylvania voters in advance of that state’s April 22 primary. He said, “You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or antitrade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

He obviously did not make those remarks in hopes they would win over those embittered people. He seemed to be making a general statement about conditions on the ground for any people in trouble who in anger and desperation go to ground and cling to principles they know are true. At a very simplified level, it’s called “sticking to your guns.” It’s like people embittered by the excesses of the Bush administration clinging to the Constitution, a desperation with which many of us are familiar.

Because of the remarks, Obama’s candidacy is under attack by the other candidates. I am convinced this is politics as usual, candidates running campaigns for the purpose of getting elected, with no real concern for Americans whom they insist Obama has insulted. There is evidence that, given a few days to think about it, Obama could make a 45-minute presentation about Pennsylvanians in desperation that would transcend politics. I would love to see that happen, just to see what effect such a presentation would have on the Pennsylvania vote on April 22.

For that quality of depth, in the entrenched shallowness of politics, I am ready to trust Obama’s vision. I am betting on his ability and willingness to change the status quo in America in the years 2009-12. In what ways? I don’t know. My support of Obama is a leap of faith, a roll of the dice. But he is the only one who gives me a chance to roll. That, I am convinced, is a lesser gamble than backing either of the other two.