My beliefs and the meaning of the presidental election

I hold the belief that at their core all humans are good, including an inherent tendency to care about others, a capacity to respond to situations with great intelligence, and something alive inside that is of great worth. Regrettably when I think about politics, too often I set aside this important understanding of human nature.

Often it is the Presidents of the United States towards whom I have the hardest time holding this view of core goodness. Make no mistake I find the policies of the Bush administration intolerable. But between policy and person there can be a great divide. Even if his goals and objective have short comings, underneath those are real human feelings and needs no different from yours or mine, and feelings and needs, I believe, are innocent, only in the misdirected attempt to meet his needs do problems emerge.

This brings me to the first thing I admire about our president elect Barack Obama. In his campaign for the presidency he was clear that he held nothing against John McCain, rather he focused criticism on the policies that Senator McCain supported. I can’t claim that the Obama campaign always took this high road, but Obama reached for it. From my view he did far better than most politicians in this regard.

I belief that there is something transformative in the power of really listening. Perhaps Obama’s greatest character strength is that he is a good listener. Reports from his role at the Harvard Law Review indicate that his administrative style is to listen to a variety of opinions which he would actually consider, and then he would make a decision. We also know that Obama worked as a community organizer because, as he told his peers, change comes from the bottom up. Community organizing and bottom up change is participatory democracy. In other words he has held the perspective that listening to the voices on the bottom matters.

We could only benefit from leaders who practice the politics of listening. There is talk of the organizational efforts from the campaign continuing. This makes sense from the perspective of a community organizer. This would be a big step towards the participatory politics of listening.

My favorite image from the entire campaign was the footage of Jesse Jackson in Grant field with tears streaming from his eyes. And hats of to him for all the steps he took to help us get to where we are now. Another belief that I hold is that cathartic is one of the most genuine and healing expressions of emotions.

Of course many of us cried when we learned that Barack Obama was elected. People will say tears of joy but I think that our tears ran deeper. We are crying because this election reflects a contradiction to the despair that many of us have felt around politics, race and the future for so long. Race, of course, is at the top of that pile of despair. In spite of the unconscious racism that most of us still have (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/Study?tid=-1 an interesting test you can take that makes the point), and the more overt racism that still too often runs our politics, we as a country in overwhelming numbers elected a President who is not white. This does not eliminate racism but it gives hope that we can overcome. Around the world people have celebrated this electoral victory, and have expressed great hope for what this may mean for our world and for peace. This outpouring may be overly optimistic but to take a moment and share in that global optimism and desire for peace is a deeply emotional experience. I have noticed this week that I continue to break into tears as I think about what has been accomplished, or when I hear some hopeful sign in the news. When I reflect my crying I see that it comes from the possibility that the despair that the world has faced for so long might be overcome. Now it is not so grim and I can cry for the despair, and as well for the joy.