It's crunch time for Wilton Bobo and Hank Lewis. The two retired veterans have been pulling for Obama for months, volunteering in ways they never dreamed, writing letters and emails, rallying friends and neighbors to the cause. And now it's down to the wire.
With thirty-something days and counting, the markets are going haywire, Tina Fey is doing Sarah Palin on "Saturday Night Live," and still Obama could lose. The thought is more than the two men can bear.
During Friday night's debate, the tension was palpable. Sitting on the couch in Wilton's family room in Hampton, VA, Hank found himself squirming. Up on the wide screen TV, there was Obama, cool as a cucumber, doing precisely the opposite of what Hank thought he should be doing. Instead of talking about how he'd govern in the first 100 days, setting priorities and acting like he's ready to take the reins, Obama was hedging. Hank could hardly sit still. Hadn't he offered his assistance to the Obama campaign? Offered to take personal vacation time from his executive job at Zeltech to meet with Obama and help him prepare for the debate? If only they'd taken him up on the offer.
Now the debate had moved to the war in Iraq. McCain was talking about the surge again. He was talking about victory. This was precisely what Hank predicted McCain would do. "What you don't understand...," McCain kept telling Obama. Hank couldn't take it anymore. He rose from the couch. You watch it, he told his buddy Wilton. I can't.
So Hank Lewis, a 22-year veteran of the U.S. Air Force who retired just shy of being promoted to lieutenant colonel, went home and did what he's been doing off and on since the Democratic Convention in Denver. He wrote another email to the Obama campaign, desperate to get the candidate's attention.
"As a military retiree," his email began, "I knew exactly what McCain was going to say. And I knew exactly what Jim Lehrer was going to ask about which cuts each candidate would make in the face of this financial crisis. I can't see why Obama didn't prepare for this!"
Then, like a debate coach, Hank went on to give Obama his two cents' worth. Here's the gist of what he said:
On cuts: "The answer is very simple--it's about priorities. You prioritize the projects at the bottom. You set priorities based on ensuring the security of the country and the projects that support where you want to lead the country. You set up a project schedule--what you plan to accomplish in the first 100 days, the first year, the second year, and so on, based on what you can get done. From this, you'll know what to cut and how to cut it."
On Iraq: "Geeeeezzze! You should've attacked McCain at his strength. He said the surge (extra troops) is what turned the war around. But the surge by itself isn't what turned the war around, it was the Iraqis themselves. They began to fight Al Quaeda, and the Maqdi Army stopped their mass killings. You knew McCain would attack you for admitting that the surge worked better than expected, so you should have been prepared better for this one. It's important militarily to know exactly why the surge worked. Letting McCain sell the false reasons for the success of the surge to the American people is a recipe for failure in future conflicts. And you shouldn't have let McCaain get away with saying he'll use the same strategy in Afghanistan! The terrain is different, everything is different--the Russians got their butts kicked in Afghanistan."
Like all Hank's emails to Obama, this one went off into cyberspace, and then Hank went back to Wilton's house to get things off his chest.
"I can see his house from my house," Wilton told OfftheBus. "Every now and then Hank will knock on my door and say, 'Brother, we've got to talk.'"
There's more than one reason why the two men are so tied to Obama's run for the presidency. The first, and most obvious, is race. Wilton and Hank are both African-American. They see themselves in Barack Obama--so much so, that the campaign has the feel of a high-stakes gamble. If Obama wins, they win. How else to explain it? It's just that personal. And if he loses....
As the older of the two, Wilton, 70, tries to stay optimistic. "If Obama loses, we all lose," he said. "But I always plan for success. I always play to win."
The stakes feel higher for Hank. At 54, he can't help but look at Obama and see himself. Like Obama, he didn't have a father's guidance when he was growing up. And like Obama, as a teen, he struggled to find his way. Hank dropped out of college before he got a degree. In the Air Force, though, he matured, and he rose steadily up the ranks. Some people told him he ought to enter politics. He could make a real difference, like Obama.
"In many ways, Barack Obama is running the campaign I would've run," Hank said. "At least he started out that way. But he's had to defend himself. What angers me is that the Republicans have thrown out his accomplishments and replaced them with a lot of fluff. They're not seeing what he was trying to do. He was trying to change our politics."
The other thing that ties Wilton and Hank to the presidential race is their status as veterans. Unlike a lot of their fellow veterans, they look at McCain and sense trouble. In their opinion, McCain's boast that he's a maverick is not a plus, it's a red flag.
"You don't want a maverick in charge," Wilton said. "Look at MacArthur. He wanted to nuke Korea. Thank goodness Truman pulled him out."
Hank puts it even more starkly: "McCain is not decisive, he's impetuous. He's a gambler. And I don't want him gambling with the life of my grandson."
In his opinion, the stakes really are that high. In talks before voter groups, he always concludes by holding up a big photograph of his grandson. That's why he won't stop writing Obama.
What he didn't realize until a few days ago, though, is that all along, his buddy Wilton has been writing Obama too. Like Hank, Wilton can't help himself. It's personal. Obama simply has to win.
If only Obama had time to open the emails. Then he'd see what his campaign means to men like Wilton and Hank.