On the day before the celebration of Martin Luther King's Birthday and two days before Barack Obama's Inauguration, I sat in the living room of the apartment where I grew up holding the hand of my Alzheimer-ravaged mother as we watched the "We are One" concert from the Lincoln Memorial. my eyes tearing up more than once, as they had when CNN announced Obama's election at 8 PM Eastern time on November 7th.
My parents had been civil rights activists, had raised money to send South to students sitting in at lunch counters and preachers leading mass marches for freedom. Martin Luther King himself had been a dinner guest in this very living room several times when I was a child and I have vivid memories of meeting that man with such a remarkable character who called upon a nation to live by its better angels and inspired my own lifelong commitment to progressive change. 46 years ago, when I was a child my mother and I traveled by bus to our nation's capitol where we joined 250,000 other Americans of all races and backgrounds spread along the great mall from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial and heard Martin Luther King deliver his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. I have probably heard excerpts from Dr. King's speech a hundred times since and yet, when I hear his words repeated, they still bring tears to my eyes.
Today, watching hundreds of thousands more fill the Washington Mall to hear some of our greatest artists and performers sing out our collective joy at the inauguration of a new young President of mixed-race descent, my eyes tear up again as I try to tell my mother, through the haze of her declining mind, that she has lived long enough to see a part of Dr. King's dream become a reality. A majority of American voters have chosen their next President--the son of a dark-skinned African and a white-skinned American--based, as Dr. King proclaimed, not on the color of his skin but on the content of his character. I don't how much my mother's declining mind could follow, but every now and then her eyes brightened and she squeezed my hand in rhythm to the music and I think she understood
During the 22 months of long months of the election campaign and the unbearably long 3 months of the transition, Barack Obama has demonstrated extraordinary character. He has shown that he has both a first class intellect and a first class temperament. He has used the skills honed as a community organizer to build not just a political campaign but a mass movement that defeated both the Clinton machine and the Lee Atwater/Karl Rove Republican machine which had dominated American politics for the past 28 years. He has shown an intellectual ability to listen to many points of view and then distill them into decisive policy and political positions. These are the qualities of character, intellect and temperament that potentially could make for a great President.
Will Obama actually become a great President, even a transformational President? It is, of course, far too soon to know. Even before he takes office, George Bush has dumped in Obama's lap a nation facing the most serious problems since the 1930's--A financial system facing collapse, a recession teetering on the bring of depression, two chaotic and difficult wars, and huge budget deficits that will limit the resources available for a new President to solve these problems.
Still, faced with these problems, Obama has the potential to be a transformational President--to take advantage of the historical moment and his extraordinary communications skills to bring about a new era of progressive political and social change. Among the changes he can start to bring about right away are a major FDR-style stimulus package including direct jobs-creating public works and green projects, an end to Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy, a significant move towards universal health care, an end to America's $10 billion a month combat role in Iraq, a serious diplomatic offensive to bring Iran into the community of civilized nations in exchange for giving up its nuclear weapons, and a major initiative to lead the world in reducing greenhouse gases.
As a lifelong progressive, Obama has already disappointed me more than once. For my taste, his appointments, while doubtlessly brilliant, have been overly centrist, with his top economic picks drawn from those who have historically supported deregulation rather than those who predicted the economic disaster it would inevitably result in, and too many of his foreign policy picks having supported the invasion of Iraq. His economic stimulus plan may not be bold enough and may be too slanted to tax cuts in order to garner unneeded votes of Republican conservatives whom a majority of voters rejected. There's a danger that like JFK and LBJ in Vietnam and like the Russians in Afghanistan, Obama could find himself sucked into an unwinnable counterinsurgency war that could undermine his Presidency. For the moment Obama seems more concerned with courting conservatives and centrists than in reaching out to the grassroots progressive movements who worked so hard to get him elected. I expect I will be disappointed by Obama more than one time again.
But in Obama's remarkable ability to reach out to the nation's better angels, in his large-scale economic stimulus package (whatever its limitations), in his appointment of an Attorney General who unequivocally calls waterboarding torture, in his environmental appointments of people who believe in science, in his willingness engage even America's adversaries, in his desire for a foreign policy that makes military action the last option rather than his first, I also see a new day dawning after the 8-year national nightmare of Bush and Cheney. I can only imagine what I would be feeling today if John McCain and Sarah Palin were about to be inaugurated.
And we must understand one more thing. How successful President Obama will be in transforming America in a progressive direction will depend on us, as well as on him. Great social change takes place through the confluence of mass popular movements and responsive political leadership.
The March on Washington taught me a lesson I will never forget--that ordinary people, when working together, can truly bring about major social and political change. The March, along with the other mass demonstrations, sit-ins, freedom rides, and voter registration drives, made it possible to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which ended legal segregation in America. Of course they didn't put an end to all racial prejudice. And even Obama's election will not by itself put an end to the poverty of the inner city or the tragedy of more African American men with prison records than college degrees. But both the Civil Rights Acts of the '60s and the elevation of Barack Obama to become the 44th President of these United States of America are extraordinary steps along the path to building a more perfect union.
I have written before about FDR's Secretary of Labor Francis Perkins (the only woman in his cabinet) who, soon after his election, went to FDR and asked him to do more for America's workers. FDR's response was "go out and make me". Among other things, Perkins organized a conference of labor leaders in the Secretary's suite, which developed a ten-point program to present to FDR, including abolition of child labor, higher wages for all workers, government recognition of the right to organize, and social security. Much of this program was eventually enacted as part of the New Deal. But it wouldn't have happened without millions of workers organizing, unionizing and demonstrating, any more than Lyndon Johnson and Congress would have passed the Civil Rights Act without African Americans and their white allies sitting in, marching, registering voters, and even dying.
So let 's celebrate Barack Obama's inauguration as the 44th President of the United States of America, based, in part, on the fulfillment of Dr. King's dream of people being judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. And then let's get to work to organize the necessary popular pressure to make Barack Obama's Presidency fulfill its potential to be a great, progressive and transformative one.