Obama and the Courage of our Convictions

A year or so ago I wrote a book entitled The Courage of Our Convictions. It urged Democratic leaders to restate the principles that guided the party successfully through the age of Roosevelt (1932-1968): commitment to national community, security alliances, citizen obligation, and equality and justice. Only when our principles are clear can voters know who we are and identify with us and can we develop persuasive and effective policies,and programs. Principles, policies, programs.

The Iowa caucus results seem to support this ideal. Senator Obama is a man of principle. He is committed to restoring a sense of national community to America. He believes in restoring our security alliances through active diplomacy and engaging those who disagree with us in constructive dialogue. He restates the requirement that we all give something back to America, to become engaged in the public arena, in the national interest. And, most important, he is the walking embodiment of equality and justice.

Already the Obama candidacy has sent a powerful message around a watching world: The torch has been passed to a new generation of American leaders, and we don't care what color it is.

As one who has struggled throughout a lifetime for restoration of idealism to American politics, I can only smile, and perhaps shed a tear of happiness, that our time may have come.

This is a new day in America. Let's call it hope.

Comments

[wshanks]

Thank you, Senator Hart. I look forward to hearing what you have to say this Monday at the University of Oklahoma. Should be an extremely interesting forum.

No more fear. I'm fired up and ready to go!!!

[stellanoir]

This is so refreshing.

As I've been nauseated by the rise of idiotic bigotry in our national dialogue in recent years this victory is an especially fantastic soothing balm.

May he sustain it and may this election not be compromised by those nefarious electronic voting machines and disproportionate distribution of them in certain areas.

I hope. I hope.

[Ariadne]

I am just beginning to allow myself to get excited. I attended a Bobby Kennedy rally when I was 13 years old and I have had most of my hopes repeatedly dashed for 40 years. Maybe, just maybe this will be a turning point and the old poltics of hatred and greed can be put behind us. After all, the Red Sox won so anything may be possible.

[Barticus]

Whitehead, in the 1950s, anyone who put in a good word for Ho Chi Minh or Mao Tse Tung was purged from the US government, leading to administrations which simply did not understand Asia. The current Bush administration is full of supporters of Cheney's multinational corporate agenda. On the other hand, Obama has advisers of all political stripes, so that he can hear all sides of an issue. Yes, that is change.

[MrMurder]

All those young voters wanting change, including overhaul of Social Security and continued occupation in the Mid East.

Let's have a bipartisan draft, like the last one, where the poor kids who can't afford college go fight in Asia...

[CommanderWhitehead]

Please forgive me, but I neglected to mention the source of the information that I just posted concerning Obama's advisory team.

It was taken from the Independent journalist Allan Nairn's transcript from yesterday morning's Democracy Now Democracynow.orgg), hosted, of course by the very great Amy Goodman.

The program essentially covered all of the candidates from both sides of the aisle, as they say, and it should be required reading for anyone who is sincerely hoping for a change in our disastrous foreign policy.

[RobtBrock]

Great to have the endorsement of President Hart!

[daveny]

Thanks, Gary.

Too many of the cynics and curmudgeons on here don't get the point -- this isn't just about rejecting Bush, it's about rejecting the past 20 years of ugly, divisive politics, and about rejecting the failure of the Boomer generation to do anything more than keep re-fighting the same old battles.

[BetterDays105]

Thank you Senator. You have always been one of my heros. We Democrats had the chance to turn the corner in 1984 and failed. In Senator Obama we have our best candidate in our lifetime. For the first time in a while I feel optimistic for my children, our nation, and our world.

[CommanderWhitehead]

Dear Gary,

Before we uncork the Champagne let's all have a quick look at some of Obama's key advisors.

Anthony Lake, he was the main force behind the US invasion of Haiti in the mid-Clinton years during which they brought back Aristide essentially in political chains, pledged to support a World Bank/IMF overhaul of the economy, which resulted in an increase in malnutrition deaths among Haitians and set the stage for the current ongoing political disaster in Haiti.

Another Obama adviser, General Merrill McPeak, an Air Force man, who not long after the Dili massacre in East Timor in ’91 that you and I survived, he was—I happened to see on Indonesian TV shortly after that—there was General McPeak overseeing the delivery to Indonesia of US fighter planes.

Another adviser, Dennis Ross. Ross, for many years under both Clinton and Bush 2, a key—he has advised Clinton and both Bushes. He oversaw US policy toward Israel/Palestine. He pushed the principle that the legal rights of the Palestinians, the rights recognized under international law, must be subordinated to the needs of the Israeli government—in other words, their desires, their desires to expand to do whatever they want in the Occupied Territories. And Ross was one of the people who, interestingly, led the political assault on former Democratic President Jimmy Carter. Carter, no peacenik—I mean, Carter is the one who bears ultimate responsibility for that Timor terror that Holbrooke was involved in. But Ross led an assault on him, because, regarding Palestine, Carter was so bold as to agree with Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa that what Israel was doing in the Occupied Territories was tantamount to apartheid. And so, Ross was one of those who fiercely attacked him.

Here's another. Sarah Sewall, who heads a human rights center at Harvard and is a former Defense official, she wrote the introduction to General Petraeus’s Marine Corps/Army counterinsurgency handbook, the handbook that is now being used worldwide by US troops in various killing operations. That’s the Obama team.

Does that really represent change?

[LionelMandrake]

I sure hope you're right senator.
Iowa was hopefully a wake-up call that our country is ready to change, and that a state with 92% white population would stand behind an African-American.
I personally never thought that a backward inbred population, (America, in general, not Iowa), that voted twice for GWB in large numbers, (whether he won or not), would be ready for a woman, let alone an African-American.
Perhaps this election rests with the young people of this country, and whether they will come out to vote in more than Iowa. Past elections have proved that the young will not go out and vote. I hope that they continue to do so.

[1daylion]

You could not be more right. Yesterday represented a chance to show how we have grown as a country and to live up to our ideals. Its time for the democratic party to unite behind this new generation and take our country back

[constitutionalive]

INDEED...THE USA NEEDS IDEALS, HOPE, DREAMS...VISIONS AKIN TO THOSE OF THE JFK ERA.

COULD JOHN EDWARDS PROVIDE THIS ?

[kishaaann]

Thank you Mr. Hart.

[myname]

Amen Senator Hart!

Obama is following the trail blazed by people such as yourself who stand on firm ground of precious principles. Hopefully you will be more vocal in your support for Obama in the coming weeks.