Yes We Can

By Cody Quinn
Co Editor-in-Chief

Barack Obama in rare quiet moment before delivering a speech.
Photo courtesy of TIME Magazine.

A perspective on Barack Obamania from a non-pundit.

While watching will.i.am’s Barack Obama inspired music video, “Yes We Can,” I cried.

This is troubling. I am a twenty-two year old male who can’t remember the last time he shed a tear. For me to show any emotion, during a YouTube video of all things, seems farfetched.

Yet here I was, staring at my laptop, with a few tears rolling down my cheek.

As the words “yes we can,” echoed over and over again, I couldn’t help but wonder, “Why am I feeling like this?”

I’m not the only one, either. Across the nation, Obama has affected people.

Maryland Congressman Elijah Cummings said, “This is not a campaign for president of the United States, this is a movement to change the world.”

Dylan Loewe of The Huffington Post wrote, "The extraordinary thing about Barack Obama is not the poetry with which he aspires to hope, change, and political realignment: it is that fundamentally, people believe him."

And I’ve seen the effect in my own life.

When a local organization recently endorsed Obama, a Polish immigrant with whom I work approached me with a Polish language newspaper that featured a picture of him on the front page.

“Obama good, ja?” he said, pointing and smiling.

“Ja,” I said.

A friend’s father asked me, “What do you think of this Obama guy?”

“I like him,” I said.

“Me too. He kinda reminds me of Kennedy.”

The most impressive example is another friend of mine. This is a person who in his five years of voter eligibility had never voted, never followed politics, and never even registered to vote. After watching Obama speak, he registered and is now actively encouraging everyone he knows to vote for the candidate. You should see his myspace page.

What is it that draws people to the man? Political insiders, pundits, and rival are all asking, “Why are people voting for Barack Obama?”

The answer isn’t clear. Even for me, a fairly informed and well-researched Obama supporter, the answer is difficult.

Many have speculated that Obama’s appeal lays in his tremendous rhetorical skill.

Joe Klein wrote in TIME magazine, “The man's use of pronouns (never I), of inspirational language and of poetic meter — ‘WE are the CHANGE that we SEEK’ — is unprecedented in recent memory. Yes, Ronald Reagan could give great set-piece speeches on grand occasions, and so could John F. Kennedy, but Obama's ability to toss one off, different each week, is simply breathtaking.”

Rhetoric alone does not explain why people stick by Obama. As many playas will tell you, it’s easy to talk some into sleeping with you, but it’s much harder to keep them around. The same is true in politics: speeches will get people interested, but they don’t keep voters enthralled.

Another argument is that black people have propelled Obama to the top of the Democratic primary. But convincing wins in predominantly white states like Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and Washington before he hit his home turf seem to discredit that notion.

Obama’s appeal does not lie solely on his policies, which share much in common with rival Hillary Clinton. Granted, policy is the reason many stick around after the initial wooing by his speeches. But a more reasonable health care plan and a refocusing of America’s economic goals do not cause people to cry or shout, “I love you!” during his rallies.

The only possible answer is emotion. People are flocking to Obama because it feels right.

I’m now crossing into territory where I can only speak for myself, but I am supporting Obama because he is offering me hope. Not a shallow, empty promise that things will get better, but the promise that if I’m willing to pitch in and help out, the world will become a better place.

I’ve seen every instance of goodness in my lifetime offset by startling negatives. President Bill Clinton’s years of office contained an unprecedented economic boom, but weakened our ability to keep blue-collar jobs in this country. His moral failings allowed the religious right to gain a toehold in our political system.

I’ve seen people rally around their fellow countrymen as planes struck the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on 9/11. Then I watched millions of dollars in relief funds go missing and President George Bush take away my unalienable rights as he launched a war whose initial cause of WMDs got swept under the rug.

I’ve seen Americans, honest-to-God Americans, become refugees in their own country after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast. That their fellow Americans rallied to aid those in need says a great deal about us as a people, but it says nothing positive about the government that failed its own citizens.

All this makes the call for a change in government appealing. The chant, “yes we can,” rings true because we, as a people, have shown that we can come together and do amazing things. That is the underlying message in Obama’s rhetoric, and that is the reason people are flocking to him.

“While hope and change are the mantra of the Obama movement, at its core, it is undergirded by trust. Obama supporters trust him, and he has gone a long way to cultivate that trust," Loewe wrote.

The American people have shown they are willing to spend money, put in work, and commit themselves to our government as long as they are not being b.s.’d. This may not be the best answer to “why Obama?” and history may prove it entirely wrong, but for once in my lifetime, I feel like I’m being reached out to. My gut tells me this man, with my help, will remind the world how great, truly great, America can be.