Obama and Me

It's bizarre to think that my child was born when someone of reasonably sound mind and principles had achieved the office of the presidency. Today Obama delivered perhaps the third best speech of his life so far (the best being his 2004 Democratic Convention speech and his Philadelphia speech on race in 2008). His speech on health care was impassioned, to the point, and easy to understand. It was an honest attempt to respond to the criticisms leveled at him from both the left and the right. It was also an honest attempt to respond to the average American citizen having a hell of a time with the health care system. It was the speech, finally, of someone determined to put his national fiscal house in order. I'm not completely on board with everything he does--of course not--but in this case, I fully support him. I understand why he can't do everything the left would want him to do.

Thinking about the fact that my son was born during the Obama presidency reminds me of the depressing fact that my father died under the George W. Bush presidency...depressing, because my father was an impassioned follower of national politics. He was a leftist, but not a knee-jerk liberal or progressive by any means. He would have been quietly thrilled about Obama being elected. He was, moreover, from Kansas. He told me stories about playing basketball with some of the black students while he was in high school in Wichita (in the late nineteen-forties and early nineteen-fifties), not because he wanted to make a statement of some sort, but because he didn't see why he should avoid them. Throughout his life, my father rigorously opposed any sort of conformism, especially when it involved imposing illogical or downright unethical norms to a situation. And unlike most people, my father would always step back from a situation in order to examine what those norms were. Most people, in most situations involving shaky moral principles, just go along to get along.

How do you raise a son who stops to question things, as my father did? Perhaps, by telling him stories about people like my father. And people like Obama.