44 and Change

Barack Obama is the next President of the United States. This is good.

I'm pretty sure he's one of those visionary guys who sees wrong and tries to right it, sees suffering and tries to heal it, sees war and tries to stop it. You can recognize a visionary by their bearing: grace under pressure. They move through the wilderness with a sense that they will arrive at the proper ending point, that there is nothing to fear but fear itself. They trust their abilities to emerge, and also acknowledge the guidance of an unseen power with a larger purpose.

If you are a worshipful person, you can trust that an Almighty has brought us here for some larger reason we may or may not understand. Just as you have to accept that Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004 were staged by this force to move us to where we are now. If you are not inclined toward religion, you can accept that a collective—We the People—has invested its own huge power in Obabma's life. He as a person is carried by our hope for something, and he in turn carries the huge load of responsibility we place in him to effect that hope.

You see greatness when the right power is shouldered by the right person. It happens every now and then—Washington, Lincoln, FDR. And remember, the results are usually nebulous until later on: Lincoln was as detested as loved, then was killed; FDR couldn't beat the Great Depression and World War sapped his strength.

On the other hand, you see anti-greatness when when the wrong power is shouldered, or power is conferred to the wrong person: Andrew Jackson was an intemperate man who thought little of cooperation; Richard Nixon was a corrupted soul who took advantage of unsure times for the sake of his own vanity.

Once in a while you get the perfect storm of evil, a destructive person handed the power to kill without shame: George Walker Bush is a sociopath who has taken the entire world to the precipice.

Obama is fortunate that he is ready for greatness. Or as likely, he is great and we are fortunate we found him. He is one of those people with actual greatness, one who does not invent disaster to get off-the-rack greatness. Like Wilson embracing World War so he can lead a crusade, or like Reagan acting as the champion of ordinary individuals, while in fact delivering the function of society to a dozen plutocrats.

Greatness is great and all, but ususally reveals itself in times of disaster. The results of greatness tend NOT to be immediate. We can expect really tough times ahead. Maybe we'll right the economy but face attacks from enemies. Maybe we can stabilize our place in the world, but we pay for world poverty by joining it. Maybe everything works out nicely over the next 3 years, only to find we're engulfed by some awful world pandemic.

Mostly, I urge us all to take, from this moment of history, a celebration of ourselves. We are the very power that we credit Obama for having. It is we who have the hope that he inspires. It is the change we will effect that excites us about him. It is we who were elected last night.

Obama's primary greatness, I believe, is that he knows that too. And will remind us as he did in his speech last night, that we "millions of Americans...proved that more than two centuries later, a government of the people, by the people and for the people has not perished from this Earth. This is your victory. "