The 2008 Race for President and the Search for Our Better Selves

Watching yesterday's Obama rally in Los Angeles featuring Oprah, Caroline Kennedy, Maria Shriver, and Michelle Obama, I was struck by a point that both Michelle Obama and Maria Shriver made but that is rarely discussed during a presidential campaign: the importance of having someone in the Oval Office who can inspire us to tap into the better angels of our nature -- who can stir people to expect more of themselves than they otherwise would.

"The thing I like the best" about Obama, said Shriver, is that "he's not about himself. He's about us... He's about the power of what we can do if we come together." And she quoted from a Hopi Indian prayer: "We are the ones we have been waiting for."

Michelle Obama made a similar point, adding that this "it's about us" dynamic would require all of us to up our game. "[Barack] is ready," she said. "The question is, what are we ready for?... Barack Obama will require that you work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism; that you put down your division; that you come out of your isolation; that you move out of your comfort zones; that you push yourself to be better; and that you engage."

This call echoed something that historian and presidential biographer David McCullough had once said about JFK. "The great thing about Kennedy," he told me, "is that he didn't say I'm going to make it easier for you. He said it's going to be harder. And he wasn't pandering to the less noble side of human nature. He was calling on us to give our best."

I'd interviewed McCullough back in 1999, along with a variety of other political observers, for a column I was doing on the 2000 race and what Americans were looking for in a president.

The consensus opinion, one that crossed party and ideological lines, was that while specific policy proposals and nuts-and-bolts plans are an important part of what a candidate brings to the table, more than anything, people are looking for a leader who can inspire and mobilize them, who can tap into America's latent reserve of idealism.

"A great president," the late Paul Wellstone told me, "is one who successfully calls on all Americans to be their own best selves."

"Every presidential election is a renewal," said McCullough. "Like spring, it brings up all the juices. The people are so tired of contrivance and fabrication and hokum. They really want to be stirred in their spirit. That's when we are at our best. The great presidents are people who caused those who follow them to do more than they thought they were capable of."

"The American people," said Cornel West, "want a statesman who will tell the truth about our collective life together, good and bad, up and down, vices and virtues. That is the ultimate act of respect for the American people."

"What a successful president does," William F. Buckley Jr. told me, "is transcend the usual marketplace collisions. FDR accomplished that, and so did Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. A successful president isn't necessarily one who takes us in a direction I applaud. But he is somebody who does get the country excited about a political purpose."

Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin agreed: "We need to get away from a political system that is so filled with minute public opinion polls and focus groups and the ability to know what the electorate is thinking at every moment that the leader loses his instincts for boldness. The job is not simply to reflect current opinion but to challenge it, move it forward and shape it. The ability to just take a stand and know that you can move the country to that stand is a lost art we need to recapture."

Back in '99, I also spoke to Sen. John McCain, who hadn't yet begun his 2000 bid for president. He too focused on "the ability to inspire Americans," and reached back to a defining moment in our history -- JFK's speech proposing the Peace Corps: "Young people were willing to live in a village hut in Africa for years and dig irrigation ditches," said McCain. "Why were they willing to do that? Why were they in fact eager to do that? It's because he inspired them to do it." Almost a decade later, McCain is still talking about sacrifice -- but these days he's thinking less of time spent digging ditches in Africa, and more of blood spilled on the streets of Iraq. Alas.

After the dark, uninspiring -- indeed deeply alienating -- years of the Bush presidency, the feeling that I took away from these conversations resonates even more profoundly today: that it is time we recognize that our search for a great president is also a search for our better selves. Finally, a political litmus test that matters: Which presidential candidate can lead us to do more good than we think we're capable of?

Follow Arianna Huffington on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ariannahuff

Comments

[Pneumaticus]

Jack Nicholson said it best tonight when he endorsed Hillary Clinton: "She never gives up; she never gives in; and she's battle-tes­ted."

[researcher]

our better selves? you have got to be kidding.

exit polls show that only 18% cared about health care the most important being the economy. the so called better selves is looking out for their wallets. ie money.

18% is about the number that does not have health care. surprise.

any country that has 47 million without health care cannot call themsleves better selves. better term would be selfish selves.

had to come to this american brand of capitalism demands a very selfish individualistic money orientied society of I got mine now you get yours.

bye bye middle class. nice knowing ya. hello corp. fascism do your thing the more you screw the american people the better they love ya.

40 billion in profits with exon mobile and even more with subs from the american taxpayer. cheney really knows how to take it the the people. wait untill you see what his reward will be when he leaves office. $$$$$

reagans trickle down theory has been screwing the american people over and over. they loved it so much they put in two bushs to screw them some more. americans do love to be screwed.

[QueenCeleste]

We get it Arianna, you support Obama. What I don't get is the excitement about this man. In his speeches he says virtually nothing. Others seem hysterically moved (not unlike Oprah's shrieking daytime audiences) by this nothingness. I find it disturbing that empty rhetoric delivered in sort of sermonizing, lofty tones is more important than real content. I just don't feel the inspiration.

[wolfgirl]

if you are talking divisive it certainly is not coming from the obama tent! we are not working it like the old days. obama has the ability to lead all of us to being a united country again.i remember the days when we were all americans not blue against red.united we stand divided we fall.arian­na is right on..thanks to her for the post

[wolfgirl]

well said!!obama baby!!!

[Pneumaticus]

Michelle Obama exorts us to "...come out of your isolation; that you move out of your comfort zones..." What comfort zone?! That's the whole problem. We don't have any stinking comfort zones! The only ones isolated are in Washington, D.C., and the only visible comnfort zone right now seems to be the Oprama Debutante Ball where all the gliterrati are gushing and giggling among themselves, with no apparent relevance to anything but themselves. How pathetic.

[Parkhurst]

OBAMA AS ELMER GANTRY

Time after time, when the Obama faithful are pressed to justify WITH SPECIFICS their charges of racism, they crawl back into the woodwork. The few who do attempt an answer get lost, spin in circles and quickly disappear up the nearest open orifice.

Even when asked to detail Obama's policy of "change", the can't. Their explanations get very New Age and hand wavy.

The truth is they have no earthly clue what Obama stands for in concrete terms, or how he will, or even could, bring about this change They can’t define it because Obama never does.

They are, in all respects except name, Moonies. They are cult followers, and Obama is their guru and savior. This isn't a political campaign, it's the Unification Church on steroids.

Like any good faith, Obama-worship has its mantras - "racist", "change", "The fierce urgency of now.", "The audacity of hope".

Savvy adults will immediately recognize that when used by Obama, the latter two chants are pure snake oil. They are meaningless out of any specific context. They are the currency of the con-artist. The coin of an Elmer Gantry.

We cannot let this man con us out of the presidency..

[mjc]

Wellstone's call to our own best selves`is exactly antithetical to Obama who has to rely on the crowds, the noisy cheers and his ability to sketch out a future without any real specifics. He needs a lot of seasoning, a lot of viewing his actual programs, or developing those. Until he can come up with something more than just himself for the future, he should retire from the scene. He really isn't that wonderful. He sounds cool but that is the least of the needs of programs he might support.

[paulbk]

This country elected George W. Bush twice. The more I read these ‘comment pages’ the better I understand it. The short answer is that 51% of voters are fear driven, intellectually crippled, hypocrites. Two points as evidence:

1-- 51% of voters believe that a scary rumor is sufficient justification for war.

2-- 51% of voters believe that other people’s children should fight the war *they* voted for by reelecting G. W. Bush. Worse, they believe it’s better to send someone like Jessica Lynch (100 lb., 19 year old woman) to Iraq four times rather than send their child once.

I rest my case.

Barack Obama gets my vote.

paul kramarchyk
Barkhamsted, Connecticut
vet: U.S. Navy 1968-74

[nunzia]

Yeah, right. When half of the electorate voted for W, they were searching for their better selves. What a load of b.s. that is.

At the very least, the repugnicans don't vote because they're searching for their better selves. They voted to keep African Americans down, for generations. Then more recently, to stop gay marriage, fight off illegal aliens. Whatever wedge issue their leadership touts.

Arianna has been smearing, attacking, besmirching, mocking and condemning Hillary since before the campaign season began.
Let's not hide her support of Obama behind some inspirational uplifting rhetoric now.

[Bytor]

I'm starting to get a little sick and tired of the
Obama orgy in the media.I like Obama,but it's a little much watching unabashed rooting that's transpiring on every program I watch.Does the media despise Hillary that much? WOW,it's not even subtle anymore.

[teri526]

It doesn’t take idealism to improve the education or healthcare systems it takes commitment to an end result, THE BEST FOR EVERYONE!!!!! It doesn’t take vision to make it difficult for American manufacturing companies to bring their jobs back into this country, it takes a strong hand to let the unions know that the outrageous salaries demanded for by their workers are what drives the greedy bastards to China and other economically struggling countries that can produce for pennies an hour. I love this country but why should a bus driver in NYC make more money than a college educated teacher? What visions is required to tell parents to take back their role as parents and make schools safe again by taking control of their children so that teachers can teach. Yes, by all means vote for Obama to give us all permission to do what we should have been doing all along, demanding the best of our elected officials so that they don’t undermine my attempts at becoming the best I can be. That doesn’t take vision that takes balls! I happen to think Hillary’s are bigger.

[teri526]

I cannot imagine that there has ever been a presidential campaign platform based on lack luster uninspired visions for a lousy future. Every president begins with the intention for a better future. The majority must believe in it because they are eventually elected into office. What we can never plan for are the unforeseen road blocks to that "new ideal". The REALITY is that not everyone is disenfranchised. Obama is telling people that he is going to level the playing field; that the people will have to work hard for that future. Just when did we ever not have to work for it? Who doesn't want Utopia? What he has cleverly done is to tell us that if we vote for him he will free us from some mythical set of chains that have kept us down. We created our own chains…we can remove them. In truth, do we need a president to do that for us? I want is to be able to make decisions for myself and live with the result. His job is to make sure that we are a people equally protected under the constitution; that corporations who have robbed us blind over the last years are stopped in their corrupt strides and that special interest groups go the way of the platypus. That doesn’t take vision that takes nerve and a steady hand. What is at stake is the entire Jenga game.

[MR]

Watching Sunday's Obama rally in Los Angeles, I was struck by a point both Michelle Obama and Maria Shriver made but that is rarely discussed during a presidential campaign: the importance of having someone in the Oval Office who can stir people to expect more of themselves than they otherwise would.


Oh please. I wish these Obama supporters would just grow up or if they want real inspiration try the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This kind of thinking is what got Reagan, Obama's role model, elected. And we are still paying for Reagan's mistakes and incompetence. I dont want a daddy for President. I want a competent President,someone very smart, who knows what they're doing. Not someone trying to inspire me with rhetoric that sounds like it comes from the inside of a "thinking of you" greeting card.

[geofrost]

Watching yesterday's Obama rally in Los Angeles featuring Oprah, Caroline Kennedy, Maria Shriver, and Michelle Obama, I was struck by a point that both Michelle Obama and Maria Shriver did not make and that is rarely discussed during a presidential campaign: the importance of having famous people who know other famous people in the media who can deliver a feel-good sermon about inspiration and one's better angels....