original post March 2010
Whether legend or truth, I remember this story from the 2008 presidential primary campaign: During a church service Ethel Kennedy leans over to Barack Obama and says, “You know, we are passing the torch.”
On January 28, 2009, Ted Kennedy thunders the pass in his endorsement speech at American University. And in that moment, the power of oratory nearly makes it so. In the hearts and in the souls of those of us who lived in Camelot for a fleeting American moment in the 1960s, deeply convicted of Barack Obama’s promise, the idea that the legend of John Fitzgerald Kennedy could be bequeathed is as real as the morning sunrise.
We survive what follows: an unending, conflicted primary campaign; an American resurrection at the Denver convention; a general election campaign so much closer than it should have been; the crisp, cold joy of a Washington D.C. morning January 20th 2009; the crush of two-million human bodies desperate to witness the Constitutional result of the Nation’s decision. Individual stories mesh into a national fabric from which Barack and Michelle Obama step forward and sway At Last to Beyonce’s lilting voice.
Governing becomes a sand that falls through outstretched fingers. The national leader to whom words had passed the torch comes face-to-face with the most intransigent major political party in American history. Its objective focused on blocking any solutions—even the act of appointing relatively minor government officials. Willing to pay any cost Republicans marshal their disciplined march toward a single objective: Barack Obama’s political demise.
Expectations of reasoned solutions from Americans voters gifted with political power dissolve. The haunting words passing the torch ring hollow in the nation’s capitol. Promised reform and national regeneration an idea now possible only through the President’s single, complex political party. Flailing in the face of the new challenge, hope freezes above all the pictures of the January 20th two million.
The screaming wake up call sounds from Massachusetts. A House Speaker muscles aside an incrementalist approach offered by a Chief of Staff. Embracing Nancy Pelosi’s bold awakening the President discovers his capacity to lead that we found so compelling during his improbable campaign. Binding not to “the need to win but the need to be true” Barack Obama turns to those with the eyes to see and the ears to hear—all, all, Democrats. We hold our collective breath this past Sunday. Then suddenly our lungs fill with the air of thawed hope.
In action, through leadership, Barack Obama closes his fingers around the passed torch.
