I don't know about you, but I'm fed up with obstructionist politics. Oh I know, the Republicans have an ideology to uphold. You can tell me I don't understand the intricacies of the political system, and you might be right, but as an author and story expert I do understand the power of a story. I know that when Republicans in Congress walk around telling everyone Obama stimulus policies will fail, then they hold only that paradigm of possibility inside themselves. They live it, breathe it, they become it. They make it reality.
Obama is a man of hope. He is an optimist. He believes in the power of holding a different kind of story inside himself. He walks that reality, that story, in the world. The details of his story were evident in his ambitious plan for this country. Can we possibly achieve all his dreams? Maybe not, but at least he has dreams, big ideas, new goals. Republicans cling to the old Goldwater-esqe goals wearing blinders. That fearful stand in the world is the story they walk, the story they bring into reality.
What we have here are two very different stories about what matters in the world: the possibility of change and hope, bolstered by clear-eyed realism, and the possibility of mired angst and retrenchment, bolstered by naysaying and fear.
With the GOP--lead by Rush Limbaugh and hoping for a Reagan resurgence in the likes of Bobby Jindal--holding steady in their tight paradigm of fear and retrenchment, and weighing down our country in the process, we will never be able to live a new story as Americans.
What does that mean, live a new story?
The story you tell yourself inside your head and heart about what is real in the world, becomes your reality. Only if you shift that story, only if you give up the old paradigm of obstruction and partisanship--fear--can a new reality dawn.
It really is that simple.