NEW YORK - Here he was, driving through the intersection of history and culture, wearing a face brighter than a thousand, brilliant suns simply because he would be getting a chance to vote on Tuesday, his oldest son's ninth birthday. His name is Francois "Frank" Pluviose, a 42-year-old New York City cabdriver who commutes to work each week from Reading, Pennsylvania -- a two and a half hour bus ride -- and he is totally immune to the disease of cynicism that has managed to infect so much of our politics for too many years.
"I come here from Haiti twenty years ago," Pluviose said the other night. "First my father, he come. Then my mother, she come. Then they send for me. It is, America is, the greatest country on earth."
Pluviose works five straight 15 hour days behind the wheel of a taxi he and a friend from the Bronx lease at a cost of $1700 a month. His wife Natasha and four children, James, 9 Tuesday, Laury Anne, 6, Victoria, 4 and Nathan, 2, remain in Reading while the father hammers out a living in the big city. At the end of his five day shift, he goes to the Port Authority terminal in mid-town Manhattan and boards a bus home.
"This week I go home early," he said. "To vote and to celebrate my son's birthday. I am very proud."
The other evening, Pluviose listened intently to the radio as he headed across the Triboro Bridge toward Manhattan. His favorite station -- 1190 AM -- was playing a recording of Martin Luther King's "We Shall Overcome" speech given in Washington 40 years ago.
"A great man," Frank Pluviose said about King. "Like Obama."
Here we have a guy who arrived in America in 1987 nearly giddy with excitement and anticipation over being able to vote Tuesday for another guy nearly unknown to the country and the larger world around us 24 months ago. It is a story -- this feeling of pride and potential felt by so many people of color -- that those of us who live largely in white America may have failed to record in true depth because we are so busy blogging and talking about the obvious that we ignored what eyesight tells you: the clamor among so many of the young along with huge numbers of minorities to look at Bush and other 20th Century politicians only in history's rear view mirror.
This is because nobody living a normal life -- paying taxes, raising a family, worrying about a future they now define by the month -- could ever prosper or even survive if consumed with the kind of anger that seems to fuel so many on both the left and the right of our politics. It has gone on now for -- what? -- a decade? Two? And it is beyond nasty with too many running for office not content with defeating an opponent; they must demonize and destroy them as well to achieve true success.
So, quite naturally and very predictably, the arrival of this calm, confident Obama on the stage, a man capable of explaining both himself and his positions in clear English sentences filled with verbs that are not employed as buzzsaws, has been greeted with relief and expectation by so many who have spent the past years taping their eyelids open whenever a politician spoke. And he has managed to prod optimism out of millions who felt run down, run over or simply ignored by a politics that took many of their children to war and too much out of their paychecks that had nowhere to grow in the first place.
"I think McCain, he is a good man," Frank Pluviose said. "But Obama, he makes me happy because he is the change. I look at him and I see my son and I think, in America you never know."
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You're the only one on Morning Joe that really knows what it's like to be outside the media bubble. As much as i like the regulars on there, it's been a long time since any of them have had to suffer from paycheck to paycheck, so i'm glad you are there to remind them. You seem to get out among regular Americans more than any of the others (except maybe Willie, but it's only a matter of time for him...).
Obama/Bidon Now
Great story...we need to remember that this election comes down to who will be there for the everyman...the "little" people. And that is Barack and Joe!
Oh and thanks for the Reading, PA shout out! I live in a suburb of Reading!
but I will be optimistic that Obama will tack center, and not be irresponsible by being onerous on businesses. I do think he is smart He is also an example of the opportunties available to most people in this country...he worked hard, leveraged his obvious talents, so good for him, it will be an American Dream come true. Which is why people keep coming here, for 200 years now, yet many complain that there is so much "unfairness"...they should apply themselves like Barack and many others that accomplished great things with no head start.
KEEP
HIM
SAFE
UNTIL
HE'S
SWORN
IN
AND
BEYOND
P-L-E-A-S-E
DON'T
DENY
US
OUR
HOPES
AND
DREAMS....
I will probably be crying for DAYS, because in the past 6 months, I have experienced the BEST and WORST of America. On the way home from the airport with my son-in-law (arriving on leave from Iraq, in civilian clothes), a car full of young men drove up beside us yelling racial epithets and making obscene gestures. My daughter cried, my son-in-law was stunned and I was devastated.
WHY I am thinking about this today? Because it is such a stark contrast of OUR America and it HAS been very tough to balance my full reign of emotions.
Today, I am so very proud of my country, but honestly prayerful that we can continue understanding and accepting each other, even if we don't look or sound alike.
has sucked the optimism out of the middle class. It has given us the most stratified economy since the days of the robber barrons of the late 19th century, and it has collapsed our economy.
The fear mongerig has made our Nation look mean and petty to the rest of the world, the incompetence in everything from FEMA to the Justice Department to the war has made America less than the sum of it's parts.
Today We the People rise again from this brief Dark Age!
Both reported lots of voters already there; both of them voted for Obama.
I hope that they will remember forever how historic an occasion this is.
I know I will.