November 19, 2008
By Clayton Woullard
I didn’t cry. That happened earlier in the year, sometime in May when it was becoming apparent that Hillary Clinton would not secure the nomination. A feeling welled up in me that not only would Obama become the Democratic Party candidate, but that he would be the next president. You could call it instinct, even though doubts regarding the Bradley effect and doubts after the Republicans’ resurgence in the polls after their convention would enter my mind often. Still it didn’t hit me until I went upstairs to my room to check out the newspapers’ coverage and outside my window I heard a noise I usually only heard on New Year’s and July 4. I opened my window. Firecrackers! People were actually celebrating a political event with fireworks, the first time I had ever experienced that.
It was not only incredible and poignant this still torn nation had elected its first black president but it was personally touching that he was a man of mixed race like myself. Having read both his books I was moved to know we had shared experiences: having been raised around mostly white people, having to encounter their ignorance, feeling torn between two racial categories, searching painfully for his racial place and time, and that in that search to unite himself, the yearning to unite others with one another beyond race, sex, creed, sexuality, or any other barrier that keeps us apart from pursuing a shared vision of a perfected world. We share a mostly calm demeanor I have strived to maintain my whole life, and a willingness to work for and even make friends with those who may disagree or even try to wound us.
And his proposed policies and style of governing search for compromise and an environment where all voices are heard. That someone so much like me could so successfully jettison to the most powerful position on the planet is truly inspiring. As Obama has said he feels despite our tumultuous times this is the perfect time to be president I’m inspired to be a great journalist during perhaps the most troubling times for the news industry. And perhaps not so coincidentally that is where my trust and positive feelings for Obama end as a citizen and my gleaming eyes becoming dissecting ones.
President-elect Obama is entering office on Jan. 20, 2009 with a country facing some of the greatest challenges in decades. Yet Obama has served less than three years in the federal government in the U.S. Senate, two of which were largely spent on the campaign trail. He has made grand, over-arching promises that would be daunting for any president to accomplish. He enters with a Democratic control of the White House, House and Senate. Now is the time more than ever for journalists (namely television “journalists”) to reserve their amorous feelings for Obama and watch him and Congress with more scrutiny than ever before, questioning him on everything they do.
The last time one party had such control over the power structure we were lead into an immoral, illegal war with a largely complacent news media who often made questioning of the president a sin rather than an obligation. And let’s not forget that the congressional Democrats voted a majority for the war, voted in the disastrous PATRIOT Act, increased surveillance of U.S. citizens (including our new president-elect) and other policies that have set back our standing in the world and at home. I don’t trust any politician. I can’t. My trust lies in the people who rely on a dissecting, penetrating press to bring them the truth and not just shades of it.
This is a call to service. I meet and overhear some college journalism students who seem to have their sails set more for their future in a journalism career and what that means rather than for the future of journalism, the people they serve and what that means. Now, in this time of transition, both in the political realm as well as in the media, we must all follow Obama’s call to service, to do the best we can, for as many as we can. Then we can all say we had a stake in a more perfect union.
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