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January 10, 2007
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January 10, 2007 |
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Editorial A week of politics at its best Over the past eight years the Bush administration has turned our nation into a country many of us barely recognize. It’s become a country that started a preemptive war for false reasons, a war in which tens of thousands of innocent people have died. It’s a country that tortures its enemies and denies their basic human rights. It’s a country that spies on its own citizens. It’s a country that cuts services to the needy and helps the rich become richer, a country that has blocked international efforts to combat global warming. It’s a country that many of us have felt ashamed to live in. Each week the death toll of American soldiers and Iraqis kept rising. Each week brought new revelations of lies and corruption that we never believed possible in America. And still we went on with our daily lives, seemingly powerless, numb to yet another revelation, yet another heartbreaking news report. Perhaps we weren’t numb after all. This past week Americans came alive again. In Iowa and New Hampshire, they went to the caucus rooms and polls in record-breaking numbers. While the media has said this so often it’s become a cliche, these voters said they want — they are demanding — a substantial change in both vision and leadership. Much credit for this new energy goes to Barack Obama. His oratory gifts are astonishing, as is his ability to connect to some deep place inside us that perhaps we didn’t know we had, a place that wants to do good and to be good, that wants to be proud of who we are, of the country in which we live. Many in Iowa and New Hampshire chose Obama, and in New Hampshire women came together for Clinton and a different sort of change, that of electing our first woman president. And Republican voters preferred McCain, the candidate perceived as a straight talker and independent thinker. After months of attack ads and cynicism, this week brought hope, enthusiasm and new ideas, American politics at its best. After so many years of despair, it’s been a week in which I, for one, remember what it’s like to be proud of my country.
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