[Note: This is a guest posting by Thea, a very good friend of mine who used to live in Chicago. She's in her late 20's and though we had spent hours and hours talking politics over the last eight or nine years that we've known each other, and had even attended protests and demonstrations together, I thought that something she said in an email to me yesterday about growing up in the Clinton era really explained why it is that Americans of her generation are so engaged in this year's presidential election. And why there is so much at stake for them, after the last eight years, in an Obama presidency. Thea currently lives in Germany where she just completed a masters degree in public art last month and is job-hunting in Köln.]
As an American studying in Germany, finding myself in the middle of a discussion about U.S. politics is quite commonplace. So is hearing intense criticism of Bush administration policies, which, more often than not, I entirely agree with or have brought up in the conversation myself. That the legacy of the Bush presidency is lasting damage to justice, world economies, hope for peace, the environment, and the United States' reputation in the world hardly bears repeating. It is now all too clear.
I can't help but think that it didn't have to be this way. I grew up during the Clinton administration and I recall a sense of optimism and hope in the ability of government to do Good. As a teenager in the 1990's it felt like my family's and my community's values were aligned with the country that we lived in or, actually, it was the other way around. We trusted that our leaders were working towards the goals of equality and peace, the same ideals we believed in. It was lucky that my young bleeding liberal heart had been sequestered away during the Reagan/Bush years in a progressive Catholic elementary school whose non-graded curriculum was based largely on conflict-resolution and U.S. civil rights activism. Some of my earliest memories include singing along to "We are the World" and seeing Hands Across America snake down my street.
When Bill Clinton came onto the national political scene in 1992, I remember seeing him play saxophone on the Arsenio Hall Show. I was 14 years old and I must admit I had a little crush on him at the time. I begged my parents to let me take saxophone lessons. Clinton was cool. He was young and idealistic. And Hillary was no wilting flower; she was a model 90's woman with a career and a maiden name. The Clinton years seemed a natural extension of the environment I was used to. At the time, thought, one couldn't see the forest for the trees: that liberal presidents were in power for just three short terms since 1968-- a couple of rest stops on a careening trip to an extreme and divisive neoconservatism.
Then, eight years ago, my optimism and trust were crushed *literally* overnight when Florida's electoral votes flipped from the Democratic to the Republican column. I cried and cried. All the scandals Republican radicals had flung at Clinton stuck, clearing the way for a right-wing government that a childhood spent in Montessori school and hippie sing-alongs did not prepare me for. Surely this was a mistake.
It was not a mistake when Bush won the election in 2004, thanks to his manipulation of Americans' fears of radical Islamic terrorism and perhaps an an even greater fear of elitism. This was a stone-cold confirmation that not only is the U.S. full of evangelicals, xenophobes, and misguided people, but they are running the show.
I wonder now at my own idealism; was it just typical childhood naiveté? Or was I living in a progressive bubble stuck in 1968, which is just not sustainable in centrist, isolationist America? I sold my dusty saxophone two years ago as I prepared to move to Germany for grad school. Gone is the little reminder taking up space under my bed. I am gone now too.
I have fears, like many on the left, that this election will be stolen out from under us. Even with the numbers in our favor, we worry. We have been burned before. As I sit glued to the internet here in Germany I am shocked and shamed at the polarizing and bigoted language coming from the extreme right. But I am also filled with pride for Barack Obama and the efforts of huge numbers people all over the U.S. rallying behind him. I turn 30 on Monday, November 3rd, the day before Election Day and I wait, excited and nervous for the best present of all, a President Obama, to be delivered one day later.
