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The Clintonites
say that Obama is peddling "false hopes". They suggest
that the fervor of the crowds at his rallies is somehow 'creepy',
as though his followers are like a herd of sheep who would follow
Obama off a cliff.
But Obama is clearly touching a nerve in America's body politic—a
pent-up idealism that seeks not utopia but simply a more decent
society. Obama can recite his list of policy prescriptions as
well as—perhaps even better than—most politicians.
But he also views this campaign as an opportunity to praise and
promote the organizers and activists on the front lines of grassroots
movements and to explain what it will take to bring about change.
A onetime organizer himself, Obama knows that, if elected, his
ability to reform healthcare, improve labor laws, tackle global
warming and restore job security and living wages will depend,
in large measure, on whether he can use his bully pulpit to mobilize
public opinion and encourage Americans to battle powerful corporate
interests and members of Congress who resist change.
Talking about the need to forge a new energy policy during a speech
in Milwaukee on Saturday, Obama explained, "I know how hard
it will be to bring about change. Exxon Mobil made $11 billion
this past quarter. They don't want to give up their profits easily."
The dictionary defines 'encourage' as 'give hope to'—and
that's an important role for a public official, including a President.
In his 2002 book, A History of Hope: When Americans Have Dared
to Dream of a Better Future, New York University historian
James Fraser examined the nation's history from the bottom up.
He showed how ordinary people have achieved extraordinary things
by mobilizing movements for change. But it is also true that,
at critical moments, a few Presidents—including Abraham Lincoln,
Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson—embraced these movements
and helped propel them forward.
Obama, who called his recent book The Audacity of Hope,
understands this history. In his speech in Milwaukee, he challenged
Clinton and others who accuse him of being what he termed a "hope-monger'.
His opponents, Obama said, think that "if you talk about
hope, you must not have a clear view of reality".
Hope, Obama countered, is not "blind optimism" or "ignoring
the challenges that stand in your way".
Obama explained that during his twenty years as a community organizer,
civil rights lawyer, state legislator and US senator, "I've
won some good fights and I've also lost some fights because good
intentions are not enough, when not fortified with political will
and political power."
"Nothing in this country worthwhile has ever happened except
when somebody somewhere was willing to hope," Obama insisted,
reviewing the history of American movements for social justice,
starting with the patriots who led the fight for independence
from England.
"That is how workers won the right to organize against violence
and intimidation. That's how women won the right to vote. That's
how young people traveled south to march and to sit-in and to
be beaten, and some went to jail and some died for freedom's cause."
Change comes about, Obama said, by "imagining, and then fighting
for, and then working for, what did not seem possible before".
That's the lesson that Fraser recounts in A History of Hope.
Starting with the revolutionaries of 1776, he shows how activists
have built powerful rank-and-file movements through hard work
and organization, guided by leaders who have combined empathy,
political savvy, and that elusive quality we call charisma.
Fraser examines the abolitionists who helped end slavery; the
progressive housing and health reformers who fought slums, sweatshops
and epidemic diseases in the early 1900s; the suffragists who
battled to give women the vote; the labor unionists who fought
for the eight- hour workday, better working conditions and living
wages; the civil rights pioneers who helped dismantle Jim Crow;
and the activists, who since the 1960s, have won hard-fought victories
for environmental protection, women's equality, decent conditions
for farmworkers, and gay rights.
The activists who propelled these movements were a diverse group.
They included middle-class reformers and upper-class do-gooders,
working-class immigrants and family farmers, slaves and sharecroppers,
clergy and journalists, Democrats and Republicans, socialists
and socialites. What they shared was a strong belief that things
should be better and that things could be better.
Abraham Lincoln was initially reluctant to divide the nation over
the issue of slavery, but he eventually gave voice to the rising
tide of abolitionism, a movement that had started decades earlier
and was gaining momentum but could not succeed without an ally
in the White House.
Woodrow Wilson was initially hostile to the women's suffrage movement.
He was not happy at the sight of women picketing in front of the
White House, a tactic designed to embarrass him. But, eventually,
he changed his attitude—in part for political expedience
and in part through a sincere change of heart—and spoke out
in favor of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution, in an
address to the Senate. Women gained the right to vote in 1920
only after suffragists combined decades of dramatic protest (including
hunger strikes and mass marches) with inside lobbying and appeals
to the consciences of male legislators—some of whom were
the husbands and fathers of the protesters.
In the 1930s, workers engaged in massive and illegal sit-down
strikes in factories throughout the country. In Michigan—where
workers had taken over a number of auto plants—a sympathetic
governor, Democrat Frank Murphy, refused to allow the National
Guard to eject the protesters even after they had defied an injunction
to evacuate the factories. His mediating role helped end the strike
on terms that provided a victory for the workers and their union.
President Franklin Roosevelt recognized that his ability to push
New Deal legislation through Congress depended on the pressure
generated by protesters. He once told a group of activists who
sought his support for legislation, "You've convinced me.
Now go out and make me do it." As the protests escalated
throughout the country, Roosevelt became more vocal, using his
bully pulpit to lash out at big business and to promote workers'
rights. Labor organizers felt confident in proclaiming, "FDR
wants you to join the union." With Roosevelt setting the
tone, and with allies like Senator Robert Wagner maneuvering in
Congress, labor protests helped win legislation guaranteeing workers'
right to organize, the minimum wage and the forty-hour week.
President John Kennedy was a hard-line cold warrior and ambivalent,
at best, about the emerging civil rights movement. Despite this,
his youth and his famous call to public service ("Ask not
what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your
country") inspired Americans, especially young people, to
challenge the nation's racial status quo.
When Lyndon Johnson took office after JFK's assassination, few
expected the Texan—a stalwart New Deal liberal but, like
FDR and JFK, no civil rights crusader—to embrace the Rev.
Martin Luther King and his followers. At the time, many Americans,
including LBJ, viewed King as a dangerous radical. However, the
willingness of activists to put their bodies on the line against
fists and fire hoses tilted public opinion. The movement's civil
disobedience, rallies and voter registration drives pricked Americans'
conscience. These efforts were indispensable for changing how
Americans viewed the plight of blacks and for putting the civil
rights at the top of the nation's agenda. LBJ recognized that
the nation's mood was changing. The civil rights activism transformed
Johnson from a reluctant advocate to a powerful ally.
King and other civil rights leaders recognized that the movement
needed Johnson to take up their cause, attract more attention
and "close the deal" through legislation. King's "I
Have a Dream" speech at the August 1963 March on Washington
inspired the nation and symbolized the necessity of building a
mass movement from the bottom up. LBJ's address to a joint session
of Congress in March 1965—in which he used the phrase "We
shall overcome" to urge support for the Voting Rights Act—put
the President's stamp of approval on civil rights activism. Johnson
said, "There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem.
There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem.
And we are met here tonight as Americans—not as Democrats
or Republicans. We are met here as Americans to solve that problem."
Not all Presidents rise to the occasion. Some straddle the fence,
forgoing the opportunity to rally Americans around their better
instincts. And some actively resist movements for justice, siding
with the forces of bigotry and reaction.
Obama recognizes that some candidates and public officials engage
in demagoguery: "I've seen how politicians can be used to
make us afraid of each other. How fear can cloud our judgment.
When suddenly we start scapegoating gay people, or immigrants,
or people who don't look like us, or Muslims, because our own
lives aren't going well."
And he clearly understands that as a candidate, and as President,
he can give voice to those on the front lines of a grassroots
movement trying to unite Americans around a common vision for
positive change. "That's leadership," he told the enthusiastic
crowd in Milwaukee last week.
Then Obama called on the crowd to "keep on marching, and
organizing, and knocking on doors, and making phone calls."
Yes, he was asking them to work on his campaign, but he was also
encouraging them to see themselves as part of the long chain of
change, the history of hope, that has often made the radical ideas
of one generation the common sense of future generations.
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