Politics and hope

~Caroline Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama for president in an op-ed piece in the NYTimes today. I don't normally pay much attention to endorsements, especially during the primaries, but probably for totally illogical reasons, this endorsement speaks to me.

I was not quite 8 years old when John F. Kennedy was elected president--too young to know or care much about politics. What I knew of JFK I got from reading the Look and Life magazines that came in the mail each week. But I still knew somehow that his election was special, that there was a sense of hope and optimism in the air.

I was not quite 11 when he was assassinated three years later. I knew more then, and I felt the sense of despair and loss that engulfed the country. JFK wasn't a perfect man and he wasn't a perfect president. If he had not been killed, or if the media had been as aggressive then as it is now perhaps the country would've become more quickly disillusioned with him. But as it was, I think, that sense of hope, that feeling that we could all together do a new thing persisted until his death, when it was ripped away in a flash of gunfire.

I grew up with the string of assassinations that marked the sixties: JFK, RFK, MLK. I watched as the war in Viet Nam escalated. I was in high school when the Kent State massacre took place, and a young adult during Watergate. I remember Nixon's resignation. I felt a glimmer of hope when Jimmy Carter was elected but it was quickly dashed (although I continue to consider him a great man). I endured Reagan and Bush, had unrealized hopes for Clinton, and have suffered through the horrors of the current administration. I watched as the social programs that made the sixties seem progressive were bit by by dismantled and the government more and more pushed the notion of everyone for him or herself, and the poor (and even the middle class) be damned.

I'm an optimistic person by nature, but it's been harder and harder to be optimistic about the route this country seems to be taking. This hit me during the long weeks of campaigning as more and more Obama was proclaimed and proclaimed himself to be the voice of hope. I've been slow to catch the enthusiasm, and I've worried that perhaps I've become a cynic after all. I think I'm afraid to hope--afraid to hope that someone good could be elected, afraid to hope that real change could take place--because I don't want to be disappointed, disillusioned once again.

But when Caroline Kennedy wrote,

Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that together we can do great things. In those rare moments, when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and reach for what we know is possible.

We have that kind of opportunity with Senator Obama. ...I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.

it made me want to hope again, to believe that things can change, that we can make a difference. You know, I don't care if the US is the greatest country on earth, or the most powerful. I do care if people have access to health care and education and jobs. And I care if my children and their children have something to hold onto, a vision of a future world that is better than the one we inhabit now.

So I'm jumping on the Obama bandwagon, and hoping for the best.