A Reason to Believe_ Lessons From an Improbable Life - Deval Patrick [70]
“Tell them that you know there are idealists among them, and that you believe in them,” I said. I tried to explain the power of having the president of the United States affirm their highest aspirations. I could tell he was skeptical; he did not want to raise anyone’s expectations too high. There is probably no more skilled politician in this generation than Bill Clinton, and his presidency, notwithstanding his personal shortcomings, was substantively among the most successful ever. But he was cautious about trying to inspire people.
Barack Obama, on the other hand, understands and embraces his role as an aspirational leader. It’s funny how many people presume that, because we are both black politicians with roots in Chicago, we’ve been friends all our lives. We didn’t actually meet until 1995, when I was at the Justice Department. Abner Mikva, then the White House counsel, was a great progressive in his own right. He had served as a congressman from Chicago and as a federal court of appeals judge in Washington, D.C., and I had gotten to know him during policy debates with the White House staff. Mikva was an adjunct professor at the University of Chicago Law School and knew a young black attorney there who was practicing voting rights law. At lunch in the White House mess one afternoon, he leaned in close.
“Have you met Barack Obama?” he asked.
“The name is familiar,” I said.
He encouraged me to meet Obama for a cup of coffee the next time I was in Chicago. When I did, I saw what he and others had found so captivating—Obama’s intelligence, idealism, and determination to make a difference in others’ lives. Here’s a guy to watch, I thought, and over the years, we stayed in touch.
By 2004, I was desperate for aspirational leadership. My frustrations with the Bush presidency had been rising steadily. I felt the Republicans had led us down a dangerous path—a huge debt, an ill-advised war, and the undue curtailing of our personal liberties in the name of national security. I do not accept all of the perceived wisdom of the Democratic Party, and some of the ideas associated with the Republican Party are appealing. Most people aren’t buying 100 percent of what either party is selling. But the country needed change. I did not know John Kerry well, but what I knew I liked. He’s smart about public policy and has a warmth and wit that do not always come through on television. Throughout his primary campaign, he tapped a yearning for change felt by many Democrats, but something was missing. It was clear that we Democrats were united against Bush and his policies. It became less and less clear, however, what we were for.
Then Obama addressed the Democratic National Convention in Boston. I had been at the convention the night before and had tickets for the night that Obama was to deliver the keynote address, but we were at home instead hosting a party for friends who had come from out of town for the convention. Obama was the Democratic candidate from Illinois for the Senate, but he had no national standing. He was little known to most of the political sophisticates at my house as well.
Many politicians pay lip service to hope and idealism, but Obama’s appeal in his speech was so clearly heartfelt that it lifted the crowd. After acknowledging the “spin masters” who embrace “the politics of anything goes,” he declared:
We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America. In the end, that’s what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or do we participate in a politics of hope …?
I’m not talking about blind optimism here—the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don’t think about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about