Forwarding the Conversation

Last week, President Obama outlined his agenda to a joint session of Congress. He will tackle green jobs, health care, education, and will slash the budget deficit. I’ve spoken with a number of people who have watched the speech and I’ve heard mixed reviews. Some thought it was too broad, while others thought it was just right. Some said there weren’t enough specifics, while others reported feeling hopeful and inspired by rhetoric.

Whether you thought the speech was effective or not it doesn’t matter. Our new President has outlined a bold agenda for the next four years. I believe that by giving a speech – void of the minutiae – he appealed to our highest ideals. He was saying that we are on a journey for which there is no charted course. He was saying that while we may not know the territory, we do know the destination. Isn’t that what JFK did when he challenged America to land a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s? At the time he had no idea how we would get there, and in 1969 we landed a man on the moon.

Big dreams and high ideals make America great, and Obama’s speech left filled me with hope and optimism. I don’t quite know how we’ll get there, but I know that we will – somehow… someway.

President Barack Obama discusses the recent passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

I wish I was alive for this speech. In this speech then-President Jimmy Carter shows a humanity that few leaders ever share. While he was unable to solve the crises of his time he tapped into something deeper and longer-lasting than inflation or an economy in turmoil. He tapped into the democratic ideal that government comes from the people. While watching this speech I found that I was humbled by Carter’s candor and touched by his sincerity.

Please share your thoughts – what would you think if George Bush gave a speech like this before the end of his Presidency?

Click here to view the full transcript of the speech.

Below is a guest post by a friend of mine named Ryan Alban. Ryan is currently a student at Webster University in St. Louis where he is the President of the College Republicans and involved with the One Campaign:

…The 2008 Presidential Election is less than 48 hours away and some of the same subjects are being discussed as have been in every previous election. One of those is “will the youth vote turn out?” Watch the video below and then read the questions posed and my response to them.

When did you first register to vote?

How old were you when you first (actually) voted?

Do you vote in every election or only during the presidential elections (every 4 years)?

What led you to vote for the first time? Why?

Is it a foregone conclusion that those youth who DO vote, will vote for Obama?

I registered to vote on the morning of my 18th birthday. My intermediate driver’s license expired, as I had received it 2 years earlier, and I had to head to the DMV to renew it and receive my full DL. When I got through the line, the clerk asked me if I would like to register to vote. With pride and without blinking, I answered yes. Of course…who wouldn’t want to register to vote? Not to mention, they already had my information and all I had to do was sign on the dotted line. The rest was taken care of for me.

Everyone says that your 16th, 18th, and 21st birthdays are the most important. When you turn 16, you can get your driver’s license. 18, buy cigarettes and pornography. 21, the last big blow out, you can head to the local bar and buy yourself a drink. These rites of passage have become ingrained in daily life. For me, 18 did not mean lung cancer or a hearty laugh with a good porno. My eighteenth birthday meant that I could proudly sign up for selective service and register to vote. I have voted in every election ever since. This year will be my FIRST presidential election, and I will head to the local precinct and wait in line all day if I have to. My voice will be heard. Who wouldn’t want theirs to be?

Year after year, the youth get riled up and active whether it is in a social movement or behind a candidate. Yet election after election, our numbers are dismal. As a young voter, I am appalled at our lack of participation. I urge you to share your story, and I urge you to vote on Tuesday.

Please share your responses.

Special Contribution:

Ryan, Age 20, St. Louis, Missouri

This TedTalk features Doris Kearns Goodwin, a Presidential historian, who talks to us about how we can look into the stories of the past as a way to see into the future. Listen to her stories and think about the lessons that apply to everyday life and to the elections of 2008.

Below are two videos and a newspaper article. The two videos have been produced on behalf of the two Presidential candidates. The first video criticizes Barack Obama for calling the war in Iraq a mistake. The second is a music video created from the Obama’s “Yes We Can” speech. The newspaper article is a New York Times op-ed written by Thomas Friedman. The article speaks to Governor Sarah Palin’s comments about Joe Biden who said that paying taxes is patriotic.  I am sure many of you have already seen or read these videos and article, but take a look at them again and think about them in the context of the following questions.

Please feel free to leave comments.

1. How does patriotism relate to freedom and vice versa?
2. What is freedom?
3. What does Senator Obama’s assertion that the Iraq War was a mistake say about his principles?
4. What does Senator Obama’s “Yes We Can” speech say about Freedom?
5. What role does patriotism play in politics?
6. What does it mean to be patriotic?

This week as Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke made their way to Capitol Hill to argue for the passage of their estimated 700 billion dollar package designed to stablize the financial markets what did we hear from our presidential candidates?

Who cares how many cars John McCain owns and what the hell does mum mean? We are in the midst of a financial crisis and all the campaigns can do is air negative ad after negative ad. Last week the Washington Post published a story titled “Recent Obama Ads More Negative Than Rival’s, Study Says.” The article goes on to explain that 77% of Obama’s ads were negative the week after the Republican National Convention while 56% of John McCain’s ads were negative. So, Obama airred more negative ads than John McCain. In total, 30 million dollars was spent between the two campaigns on ads with and it’s possible that almost 20 million of those dollars went to negative campaign advertisements. For me, it doesn’t matter who is airring more negative ads because a few weeks before the Democratic Convention it was the John McCain campaign who was tossing the bigger mud pies.

What matters right now is that in the midst of a financial crisis both campaigns have decided to pummel each other into the ground. At a time when America’s President is publicly taking a back-seat role to a member of his cabinet the only thing that the two men running for the highest office in the land can do is resort to petty attacks. America needs leadership and neither candidate is showing that they are capable of leading. This morning Obama made the statement that he may not even go to Washington to vote on the 700 billion dollar financial package if it looks like it’s a sure thing to pass. Senator Obama might not go to Washington to vote on what could be one of the most significant bills in United States history? What does that say about the way he will lead as President? John McCain has not yet committed to being in DC for the vote? What would it say to the country if neither Presidential candidate went to DC to vote on this bill?

At the same time that these ads are running Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York, went on Meet the Press to talk about the crisis. As I watched I found myself saying to myself “man, he sounds presidential.” After I finished watching I went online to watch the latest statements from both candidates and was dissapointed. Neither sounded like a President attempting to address a crisis, they sounded like fools trying to figure out how to fill a sound-bite without saying anything at all. Bloomberg projected an heir of calm detachment. He seemed confident and at ease with the questions and he didn’t sugarcoat the problem. 

As I watched Mayor Bloomberg I couldn’t help but wonder why can’t our Presidential candidates talk to us this way? Maybe that’s not what we, the public, is demanding or maybe it’s something else. All I know is that at the end of the day one candidate will win and be faced with cleaning up this mess. My sincere hope is that the performance goes better than the auditons.

Barack Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for president Thursday night. This is taken from the text of his speech, highlighting the 150 most common words (this was produced by Wordle)

Obama Nomination Acceptance Speech Word Cloud

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The fact that people respond to brute force and taglines over nuance, reason, and reflection MADDENS me. If we are to forward the conversation together we must be willing to engage in a dialogue that is informed by common commitments and a willingness to act in tandom. What we cannot do is stick to slogans, taglines, and talking points that have no meaning. Both Presidential campaigns are guilty of the latter, though there is a significant difference. This difference was highlighted at Rick Warren’s Faith Form last week.