Leadership Begins With Character

[Tx4obama]

Leadership Begins With Character

To be sure, many of the reasons I will be voting for Barack Obama in November are common ones for people of my particular political bent.

These reasons include, but are not limited to: a distaste for religious extremity in the political realm; a lifelong commitment to women's reproductive rights; a reluctance to start bombing Iran any day now; a belief that Americans might actually benefit from a bit of health care; a certainty that -- based on the incontrovertible evidence of the last half century -- Democrats do a far better job handling the economy than Republicans; a repulsion at the idea of transforming the mega-rich into state-sponsored welfare queens; an inability to forget that poor, struggling, and disabled people still exist, and that they sometimes need our help; a heartfelt concern for the personal freedoms of gay families; a qualm or two about the notion of building a wall along the Mexican border; a desire for at least minimal protection of the environment; and a general sense of alarm about possible future Supreme Court inductees.

But none of these constitute my main reason. The main reason I will vote for Barack Obama in November is because I admire him. The moment I first realized the depth of this admiration -- and also realized how important it is -- was in August of 2008, right after John McCain named Sarah Palin as his running mate. It might be difficult to remember now, but during the week or so following the 2008 Republican Convention, Ms. Palin's electrifying presence in the campaign caused a lot of people like me to freak the hell out. We thought, This is it, the goose is cooked, the game is up. She seemed so powerful, so galvanizing, so terrifying. As difficult as this is to recall now, Sarah Palin's nomination seemed at the time like the most brilliant and sinister tactic John McCain had ever executed in his life, and quite suddenly it appeared that he might win because of her. I had friends calling me in panic, saying, "She's got fascistic potential, and there's no way to shut her down!" I had friends calling me in tears of alarm, with the customary suicidal threat-like statements about how it was seriously time to move to Canada now. I had one friend whose husband put her on an enforced media blackout for a few days, because this woman was so agitated by Sarah Palin's very existence that she literally could not sleep.

At the height of Palin-mania, I hosted a barbecue one night at my house, and the only thing we did -- all nine of us liberal Americans seated around the table -- was to scream at each other in increasingly frenetic consensus that this was a fucking nightmare! It was one of those nights where everyone agrees with each other completely, yet somehow nobody can stop yelling. Certainly nobody was behaving that night with any sort of decorum or comportment; we were too jacked up on fear and hysteria to even take a breath.

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Full article here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-gilbert/barack-obama-leadership_b_1904064.html

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