Obama and the Absense of Apathy

Posted on | January 21, 2009 |

There’s a line in the Radiohead song “The Bends” that goes “I wish it was the sixties/I wish I could be happy/I wish, I wish, I wish something would happen.” Until recently that line summed up my political feelings since I began having political feelings. Not my political thoughts, mind you, but political feelings.

Whenever I would listen to my parents, or anyone who participated in the movements of the sixties, talk about that era they would describe a hope, a drive, a unity, an optimism that was obviously palpable. I always envied them for that feeling. I longed to feel that somehow it wasn’t all just politics as usual, that you were a part of something big and uniting in your culture. For all the philosophical and fashion mistakes of the sixties–people changed their society, which is a rare achievement. Since I came of age in the 90s, I have been surrounded by angst, fear and flaccid apathy– until Obama earned the democratic nomination for president.

I’m not naive enough to believe that Obama’s election or inauguration are culturally equivalent to the civil rights movement, but something palpable happened in the hearts and minds of a lot of people because of Obama. People got happier, more hopeful, more engaged. And this engagement crossed age, race, sex and class barriers. In the simplest of terms, just about everyone with a liberal bone in their body wanted to be excited about this guy. Suddenly, almost no one was talking about “the lesser of two evils” or “holding your nose and voting” the way they had in every previous presidential election I had witnessed.  People wanted to vote for Obama; they were excited about it.

I read this article in the New York Times about Obama’s astonishing political capital: Poll Finds Faith in Obama, Mixed with Patience 79% of Americans are optimistic about the next four years under Obama, including 58% of people who voted for McCain. Furthermore, most are not expecting much in the way of change for the next two years. Honestly, when was the last time 79% of Americans were optimistic about anything. It can’t last forever, but nor is it likely to evaporate any time soon. The thing about hope is that you don’t need much improvement to keep hoping. Only in the wake of total failure do people regret previous hopes.

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