When my Argentinean friends ask me how McCain could have chosen Palin as his running mate, I usually have to get into the discussion of America's culture war. It's a topic that always gets me worked up, so I try to summarize for them:
Half of the country is proud of our diversity and half is threatened by it. Half believes that people who don't have a job need a hand to get back on track, and half thinks they're slackers. Half believes in science, and half mocks science.
Then I explain that Obama represents the first half, McCain is somewhere in the middle, and Palin represents the second half. Poor Biden, no one seems to ask about him.
But whenever I talk about Obama, my friends notice that my face lights up. Since Argentines are inherently skeptical of government, they think I'm naive (and they may be right). Explaining my excitement over Obama is way more difficult than explaining the culture wars.
"It's what Obama represents," I tell them. "He's half black, half white, well educated, articulate, rational. He makes me feel good about my country again."
They inevitably bring up Clinton. "Besides the race issue," they ask, "isn't Obama pretty much like Clinton?"
And politically, they're right. He is a lot like Clinton. And while I liked Clinton, my face didn't light up when I spoke about him. "It could just be that the past eight years were so bad that any sign of hope makes one half of the country feel elated," a friend suggested.
"Maybe." I left it at that not sure how I could explain what it is really about to me.
But today I read Roger Cohen's op-ed in the New York Times, American Stories. And now, I'm ready to go out with my friends tonight and give them my answer to the question.
There are many of cultural divides in the US, but the big ones have been over race, religion, and region. White vs. black, Christians vs. secularists, Northerners vs. Southerners. And over the past eight years, us vs. them has reached catastrophic levels and it has been fueled by our leaders. To me, Obama represents the opportunity for Americans to be one people. His speeches inspire us to see past these divides. It's in part due to the fact that he doesn't attack his opponents on cultural issues, he rises above that, and, in so doing, sets an example for everyone. That's the hope that I see in Obama.
And I hope that if this is the change Obama brings to the States, it might spread. And that, I believe, would bring more security and prosperity to the entire world.
