There is a clear choice posed to the American people: an aging warrior or a vital healer. In this dangerous world where America has a choice to lead or to destroy, my choice is to go for the healer. I am voting for Barack Obama.
Dissecting their acceptance speeches left no doubt as to the tone of these individual candidacies. McCain used his soldier background, used the pronoun “I”, and ended his speech with repetitions of “fight”:
I'm going to fight for my cause every day as your president. I'm going to fight to make sure every American has every reason to thank God, as I thank him: that I'm an American, a proud citizen of the greatest country on Earth, and with hard work, strong faith and a little courage, great things are always within our reach. Fight with me. Fight with me. Fight for what's right for our country. Fight for the ideals and character of a free people. Fight for our children's future. Fight for justice and opportunity for all. Stand up to defend our country from its enemies. Stand up for each other; for beautiful, blessed, bountiful America. Stand up, stand up, stand up and fight. Nothing is inevitable here. We're Americans, and we never give up. We never quit. We never hide from history. We make history.
Click here to go to a transcript of McCain’s acceptance speech.
McCain’s speech goes straight to the heart of the traditional American archetype: the frontier cowboy whose imagery George W. so ruthlessly exploited. Remember, Bush didn’t have that ranch until he was getting ready to run for the White House. He created a façade of the ideal of the independent frontier man when in reality he was the scion of a New England elite family, educated in the finest schools in the Northeast, and a failed businessman, not once, not twice, but several times.
Obama brings a more global stance to the campaign that we are a citizen nation of the planet. I have equated his language throughout the primary season as “spiritual feminist.” We are all connected, we rise and fall together. The sense of community, healing, and working together so that solutions to the historic problems plaguing our country and exacerbated during the last eight years can be developed by real citizen engagement. Only by tapping the intelligence, energy, and commitment of the everyone can we solve the problems of the world. We must do this by finding common ground, ending the polarization.
America, our work will not be easy. The challenges we face require tough choices, and Democrats as well as Republicans will need to cast off the worn-out ideas and politics of the past. For part of what has been lost these past eight years can't just be measured by lost wages or bigger trade deficits. What has also been lost is our sense of common purpose our sense of higher purpose. And that's what we have to restore. We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country. The reality of gun ownership may be different for hunters in rural Ohio than for those plagued by gang-violence in Cleveland, but don't tell me we can't uphold the Second Amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals. I know there are differences on same-sex marriage, but surely we can agree that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters deserve to visit the person they love in the hospital and to live lives free of discrimination. Passions fly on immigration, but I don't know anyone who benefits when a mother is separated from her infant child or an employer undercuts American wages by hiring illegal workers. This too is part of America's promise the promise of a democracy where we can find the strength and grace to bridge divides and unite in common effort.
On August 31st, I annotated Obama’s acceptance speech.
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