All else about today, I’ll likely forget.
This is something I’ve been looking forward to, but my brain is experiencing a little cognitive dissonance in trying to parse the data. This requires a little lead-up:
Barack Obama’s campaign website was (and, so far, still is) a pretty stellar example of modern, standards-based web development. The people responsible for it not only had a fantastic grasp of typography and smart graphic design, but also put to good use some of the most up-to-date methods of producing a website. It’s at least as progressive as the candidate that it represented. It’s forward-thinking (supporting new and future browsers), but it’s also pragmatic (catering to antique browsers like the now-seven-year-old Internet Explorer 6). I said to my friend Libby yesterday, something I never in a million years thought I’d say: I just learned a cool new IE6 .png fix from the website of the President-Elect of the United States. WTF?
Yesterday, in case you hadn’t seen it, the office of the President-Elect put up a website. It’s the first fulfillment of Obama’s promise to bring transparency to the White House, and I can’t wait to see where it goes. Of note, most of the stuff on the site is simply a verbatim list of his campaign promises, which seemingly haven’t gone out the window since he was elected. They’ve got a digital Press Room, which is the thing that has me geekin’ out right now:
Watching the President-Elect on my phone.
I just checked my RSS feed reader on my cell phone, and saw that there was a Press Release from the Office of the President-Elect. There was a link to a YouTube video of the President-Elect’s comments. I watched it. What he said didn’t change my life. But the way I experienced it did.
This is the first time I have taken an intensely personal interest in an election. I’ve been interested before, but I’ve been so disenfranchised by the BS over Clinton’s escapades, and by the subsequent election of a scoundrel-idiot, that I simply wanted it to all go away after election day. I won’t get too deep into the subject, because my friend Libby has already expressed what I was thinking.
But now I’m awake. And I fully appreciate the fact that my modern digital life allows me to quickly peek at what the guy we elected is doing, easily and efficiently. This guy gets it, or at least understands how to pick people who do.
I’ve been working on websites for years. Any website that has any government ties at all, is pretty much always gonna suck. It’s a hallmark of bureaucracy. I’ve worked on sites for businesses that were required to use the State of California’s web template, and I was astounded at what a pile of shit the government was forcing me to use. But here’s the new website of the President-Elect, and it’s effing beautiful.
But here’s where I need your help: They posted a video to YouTube. I mean…is that ok?
Sure, it’s ok by me, but there are always connotations. That’s why bureaucracy sucks so badly. It’s because government institutions simply can’t do anything without worrying about unintended repercussions. What if Yahoo puts up advertisements that are offensive, or are contrary to the beliefs of the new administration? And what about Vimeo? By directing traffic to YouTube, in the President-Elect’s website effectively snubbing other video services, or showing favoritism?
You see why I’ve got this itch on my brain? What are your thoughts? I know it’s a really geeky concern, and a bit odd of me to sweat it, considering my hatred of bureaucracy…but that’s why I described it as “cognitive dissonance.”
Set me straight.
You’re an American. Your vote counts, and your opinion counts, even if you’re nuttier than squirrel shit.
And so does mine.
You don’t have to like our elected official, you don’t have to agree with his values or his plans, and you are not only perfectly within your rights to raise a stink when things go wrong, but in fact it’s your ultimate duty to effect change if that’s what’s best for the country. That’s what happened yesterday. Only 52% of this nation’s active voters got behind the guy who’s going to be your President. So there’s a big old glut of you out there who ain’t too happy about that.
But here’s where I stop understanding your pain: if you’ve got some huge fear that this guy is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, or that he’s orchestrated some nefarious scheme to hoodwink us all, then you’ve simply entered into tinfoil-hat territory. Sure, the nutty notion that he’s a Manchurian Candidate is pretty easily waved aside. But the assertions that the planks in his campaign platform are just ill-understood by the masses, or that we were all lulled into complacency by his lofty rhetoric and failed to see the “truth” of his plans, how they will destroy this country, or shake the foundations of what makes this nation great…is complete and utter horseshit.
It’s a stance of “I’ve got the truth, and you’re all fools.” And it’s a pretty reliable continuation of the “if you’re not with us, you’re against us” sort of over-simplification and intolerant viewpoint that’s been propagated heavily since the beginning of the George W. Bush administration. It’s the “easy” way of conducting political discourse, because it’s inherently difficult to take the high road and see from the other guy’s viewpoint. Of course, it’s not a new way of doing things, but it’s an ideology that gains great traction when the leader of the free world employs it. You want to know why I hated Bush? That’s why.
But one of the many reasons I’m happy today is that there are slightly more of us than there are of you. And my hope is that we will prove to you that the way we’re heading after today will not only be the best solution to our short-term problems, but it will also strategically place our nation on a much stronger path. Give it time.
A reader wrote in to Andrew Sullivan today, expressing an experience that closely matches my own:
This is my first election year without a TV or local radio. I have been completely dependent on the internet and print media for my electoral news.
Instead of bulleted paragraph points in a brochure or snippets of speech chosen for me by an editor or the oddness of my brain, I have read (and reread) or watched (and rewatched) entire speeches and election platforms online.
The result of all this exposure dawned on me when I glanced at my ballot. Instead of the straight Republican ticket of previous years, my ballot this year is a jumbled, bi-partisan alphabet soup of R’s, D’s, and I’s. I feel so much hope and delight about this!
Now, the fact is, I do have a TV, and there’s plenty of radio coverage where I live. But, in sharp contrast to my life of four years ago (and even sharper contrast with eight years ago), I simply don’t watch any broadcast TV these days. My TV is there for movies and select TV shows on DVD. And the occasional World Series or Super Bowl.
This is the first time in my entire life that I’ve listened — from beginning to end — to each of the speeches given at the Republican and Democratic conventions. It’s the first time I have completely circumvented the mainstream media filter. Whether or not there is an overarching bias on ABC or CBS, Fox News or MSNBC, I would have no clue. Of course, I do see snippets of Hannity and Olbermann on YouTube, so it’s pretty clear to me that these biases not only exist, but they’re pretty strong. But I have, quite honestly, been craving the straight dope, with which to make my own goddamned decision. I have seen, in my lifetime, people I love dearly, swinging into a complacency that takes the responsibility of decision-making out of their hands, and placing it into the hands of opinion-givers, no matter how tattered their credibility may be. That is compromise, and I’m sick of being manipulated like that.
Yesterday, I saw an excerpt video from a speech that Barack Obama gave in Colorado Springs this summer. Someone I care about immensely shared it with me. The entirety of the brief video is quoted below:
“We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded.”
This statement is alarming. It caused a red alert. People all over the internet saw it as an ultra-left-wing slip of the tongue, heralding the creation of a Gestapo-style security force. I must admit, when I saw this video, I got a little concerned: I’ve been assuming my information was rather complete, yet here was this phrase that totally caught me off-guard. When Googling the phrase “obama civilian national security force,” the entire first page of results were blog entries by really scared folks. Some authored by the usual band of conspiracy theorists and nut-jobs, but some were also written by normally-rational conservatives and liberals alike. The first “un-biased” story I could find on the subject was in the AARP Bulletin Today. I know it’s a little catty of me, but I always assume older folks to be a bit more conservative, and therefore a bit more sensitive to extremely liberal ideas. I may be right or wrong on that prejudice, but the truth of the matter is, the folks at AARP Bulletin Today actually took the time to either read, listen to, or watch the whole speech. And they weren’t concerned…they lauded the speech and the ideas within it.
So I watched the whole speech. And context makes a world of difference. It’s the difference between hearing “Civilian National Security Force” and hearing “civilian national security force.” The man at the podium was talking about John F. Kennedy’s Peace Corps, and Bill Clinton’s AmeriCorps, as well as the Foreign Service and all the other ways of serving your country, from your local community up to the military and federal government. Obama was speaking to an enormous collection of veterans and active-service men and women in Colorado Springs, and he was getting enormous cheers and even preemptive clapping for all of the efforts he was suggesting. To think, for even one minute, that the people in that audience were somehow hoodwinked, or simply not listening is, quite frankly, a radical assertion.
Now, I need to understand, as every Obama supporter does, that comparing him to John F. Kennedy is a ridiculous endeavor. But the fact of the matter is, Kennedy made a clear call to action. He believed in service, and he had the momentum, the support, and the persuasive skills to put it in a way that motivated the masses. None of us, liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, can deny that Barack Obama’s campaign has not only gotten the masses motivated and involved, but that the effort has moved people.
One night, on the way home from work, I made a slight detour over to Berkeley, and peeked into the local Obama campaign headquarters. The place was bursting at the seams, and almost everyone was on the phone. People were laughing, walking around, passing phones back and forth, and generally just interacting with Americans, as Americans. One lady near the door was on the phone with someone who was clearly voting McCain. After a brief and entirely ineffective attempt to convey the benefits of voting Obama, she expressed her respect for the person’s decision, and reminded them to make sure they do get out and vote, not only for the president, but for the ballot measures and other propositions on the ballot. And I know: this is Berkeley. You don’t have to tell me how feel-good Berkeley is. But the fact is, stories like this seem to be coming from all over the country. There is not only an ethic of service in the Obama campaign, but there is a sense of cooperation. Disagreements are welcomed…that’s what makes America great.
The tone of this presidential campaign has had an extremely bipolar attitude. That fact came into sharp focus for me in the form of a Twitter post from John Gruber: “Did anything get booed during Obama’s speech?” The entire Republican National Convention was absolutely peppered with slamming and booing. Each speaker used dramatic pauses and accusatory rhetoric to egg the crowd on. During the Democratic National Convention, the feeling was much more about insight and outlook. Sure, most of the speakers cast a critical eye upon their opponents, and they got pretty damned heated about the shortcomings of McCain’s promise for change, as well as the record he’s got behind him. But they did not use the lectern to encourage animosity. The goal seemed to be to present the problem, and to swiftly present the candidate’s proposed solution, without dwelling on anger about the past. The same structure is used on the issues pages of Obama’s website.
This is what puts Obama ahead in the polls. It’s not just his speeches, and it’s not just his tendency to limit the anger in his audience (and divert it into more effective pursuits), and it’s not just the enthusiasm and engagement that’s present in his campaign workers. All of these things add up to something inspiring, and it’s the first such phenomenon I’ve seen in my lifetime that feeds itself, and isn’t built on fear or hate. It has snowballed, but it is very much in control.
The challenge now, and it’s one to which Obama seems committed, is to keep that momentum going after today. To continue to ask our nation to get involved, to realize their part in the betterment of this nation. You don’t have to be a Democrat, or even an Obama supporter to hear that call and make it personal. For me, during this election, it has meant taking my head out of the sand. I’ll own that, as I know that’s my first step. What’s yours?
I think it’s maybe time to call a doctor.