There is a danger in expecting too much from anyone, especially a politician. But what is astounding about this campaign is not Obama's promises, but his demands: he rather gently admonishes an often bewildered media; he asks Americans to invest not only in themselves but in each other; he asks political parties to find their similarities, not their differences. He sincerely believes that we can be better, be more, than what we have been. He respects the knowledge and wisdom of common people to judge him based on complex, nuanced, and serious arguments. And he trusts them. He does not just ask us to have the audacity of hope: he embodies it.
Perhaps most importantly, he does so with grace and humility. He acknowledges he does not have all the answers. He admits his mistakes. It is unfortunate that this is so refreshing, so rare, in the political arena, but it is; it is almost shocking.
Maybe Obama's message wouldn't resonate with me as much as it does if I did not feel, without the aid of scare tactics, like this world might be spiraling out of control. In the past few decades, technology, climate change, and war have been threatening to overwhelm our abilities to cope. The past two great wars were unthinkable tragedies of unimaginable destructiveness. Our civilizations rest on the paper-thin flimsyness of "mutually assured destruction." In the past few centuries, we have been unable to defeat poverty, hunger, genocide or disease. We can watch only helplessly as our population rockets beyond ecological sustainability -- not numbers, but people, our brothers and sisters.
Chances are, in my lifetime, these things won't matter. But with each generation, those odds fade; Moore's law and its corollaries demand that at some point we make a stand. I am not naive enough to believe that Obama will messianically reverse catastrophic trends. But what he will do is give us an honest chance at looking at old problems with fresh eyes; at reinvigorating our instinctive desire to come together as human beings; at giving us new faith in the process, the opportunity, and the ability of paving a better future for our children.
It helps, too, that he does so with a pragmatic idealism that is very near to my own heart. I have never identified so strongly with a political candidate, felt as though I shared so many of his worldviews. Obama is a generational candidate. His is a diverse experience, a tolerant experience, an academic experience, and an experimental experience. He believes in the decency of ordinary human beings. He takes faith in community, in sharing, in uplifting. His world is a world in which the means are an end in themselves, are meaningful for their own sake. It is a journey I desperately want to take.
If my words sound dramatic, passionate, then well, that is nothing new. If it is over the top, then so be it. I have had my faltering moments of belief with Obama, especially in the year leading up to the Iowa caucus. But when, that evening, he proclaimed that this is a "defining moment in the history of America", I didn't just believe him. I felt it.