So much has been written about the historic rise of Barack Obama, about his roots and development, and about his inauguration to the Presidency that I wasn't sure I wanted to address it here. Sometimes when you pore over something, when you try to capture in words that indefinable thing that makes an event or a time period feel special, you erode its magic and in trying to honor it make it less than it should be. This phenomenon seemed to come to a head at the time of Obama's inauguration - there was so much static being emitted by news radio, talk show hosts, cable networks, print journalists and bloggers that it felt impossible just to take in the event for what it was, that there were so many other voices in your head that you couldn't hear the voice of the man on the podium.
Musicians were partly responsible for Obama burnout too. So many pro-Barack jams were released during the campaign and the "President Elect" period that it was hard to keep track, and very few of those in any way captured the feelings that were sweeping the country and the electorate. They either resorted to glib declarations of historical significance, repeated so often that they somehow sounded run-of-the-mill, or unrealistic rainbows-and-unicorns declarations of how the post-Bush world was instantly going to become a modern day Garden of Eden. Sure, there were some good one-liners: I personally resorted to a mixture of laughing and sniffling the first time I heard Jay-Z declare that "my President is black / but his House is all White". But on the whole music and musicians found it difficult to encapsulate in chords or rhymes what he were experiencing in our heads and hearts.
It struck me some time later that one song had actually managed to capture what made things feel so seismic and so urgent, albeit unintentionally. A song released in November 2007, before the final stage of the Obama rocketride, perfectly evokes the feelings of November 2008. It doesn’t do this by waxing hopeful or talking about change – instead, the artist eloquently makes the case for change by describing his environment as shaped by the Presidency of George Bush, by presenting the reasons why we needed hope rather than a profile of the ultimate source of that hope. The Washington DC rapper Wale, in his song “Nike Boots”, drew out all of the themes and issues that made us desperate for change, and by listening to the song we can identify all of the reasons why we felt so elated on Election Day, all of the things that we hope to see during an Obama presidency:
The restoration of representation:
Pure and simple, many people felt either passively unrepresented or actively discriminated against during the Bush era. While Wale’s DC hood was particular in having “no Congressional reppers”, even those who had Congressmen or Congresswomen to elect often found it hard to see what good it did them. The political powerplayers seemed distant, disconnected and vainglorious, “nobody seems to care, so complacent with the victory”, no-one truly wanted to “represent the lifeless lives”. One of the things we were all hoping that the Obama administration will achieve is to restore the feeling that people are genuinely being represented, that the best interests of the majority are looked after. Wale touched on what we longed to hear from Obama when he declared that “I decree I’m forming a new alliance / oppose the ones poisoning the minds / they lying”.
The repair of social division
Societies are always complex, difficult entities that tend towards splintering and a lack of internal cohesion. It is hard to argue, however, that the Bush era didn’t see a heightening of social divisions and an increase in feelings of separation and alienation. It felt like “the love is gone with one another”, like “we ain’t right and always at our throats”, and that’s a “hard” way to live. It wears on you, and no amount of ceremony or recourse to national pride will make up for that. The result is that everyone ended up feeling tentative and worn down – “melancholy we are / although we learn to live it / pessimistic we are / carry odds like luggage”. People ended up looking inwards, focusing on keeping themselves going at the expense of others, of looking after their little worlds rather than the large one, hence Wale’s desperate plea that people come together across “PG, Riverdale, Largo, Temple Hills, Cap Heights, 124, Landover, Everywhere, Saratoga, 640, Berry Farms, 1-4, KDY, every corner.” No President, no matter how broad-based his appeal, will be able to resolve all or any of these issues straight away. But let’s be honest, we are all dreaming that in 8 years time we might be able to say that significant steps forward have been made.
An end to shameful and shameless partisan bickering
Republicans and Democrats alike used the last eight years to further their personal initiatives, to bicker and argue, and crucially to exalt the political process over and above policy achievement. They cared more about the way that the sausages were made than whether the sausages themselves tasted good. Wale perfectly captures that the mood in Washington, the “most opinionated city you can make it in”, was all sound and fury (“a lot of drama / a lot of beef”) and ultimately signified nothing. While people in his neighbourhood bought black Nike Boots because “if you ain’t wearing no color can’t nobody say nothing” the politicians hid behind their colors, appealing to died-in-the-wool Reds and Blues rather than tending to the populace as a whole. They shrugged off personal accountability, hiding behind party lines, thinking that “one can never be judged when he dress like his brothers”. Again, this will be hard to change during the Obama Presidency, as the looming battles over the Stimulus Package indicate, but if change is needed anywhere it is on Capitol Hill and State Capitals.
The return of higher ideals
Honestly, as much as we all like to pretend that we value political realism over lofty rhetoric, there is a part of everyone that wants a President to embody or reflect a little human magic. While we may grade them on ground-out results, if they can get things done while appealing to our emotional sensibilities then so much the better, and never was that more true than after four years of Bush-Cheney realistic cynicism. So having a President who is lyrical (have you heard a better description than Wale’s evocation of “A fighter / in the form of a writer / in the form of a poet”) and committed (“Lord, I’m so focused / more focused that I’ve ever been”) and appeals to the many rather than the few (“From the dealers to the kids / to the squares to the fly / one thing we are aligned with”) felt wonderful.
Most of all, as the Obama campaign realised early, we wanted an injection of hope, and energy, and a sense of possibility amid the chaos. We wanted to feel like a great country could turn itself around, could be a force for good again, could de-Cheney itself. We wanted to feel like the United States, after everything that’s happened during the last few years, could, in the words of Wale, “still walk around, flyer than the rest of ‘em”.
