Columnist - John Sammon
I was thinking a lot today about why I’m going to vote for Barack Obama on Tuesday. Partly, it’s a chance to undo the past, that of my own, and my country’s.

Only part of the past. Not the good parts.

I was raised in a typical white racist middle class household of the 1950s. I inherited some prejudices that negated my own humanity, and threatened to trap me in a prison of my own making. It took awhile to understand that.

Obama carries the promise that America, an imperfect experiment that has always fallen short of its original promise, can finally show the world; we are capable of going beyond the narrow confines of belligerence, and tribalism, of them against us. Of a mentality that says, never openly, that only a part of us matter.

In the end, this is not a case of competing philosophies. One of the candidates has shown he is a rationalist, a person who tries to think, rather than just react. Obama is a populist who views the country in more of an all-inclusive way, rather than as disparate groups of worthies, and those who aren’t.

The Civil War was fought to see if America could survive its own burgeoning immorality, and it barely did, though the job was left unfinished. Now, it’s time to see if we the people, all of us, can climb upwards to the next rung of the ladder, to become a country in which all creeds, if not embraced, can at least be tolerated, and have their rightful place in the sun.

Lincoln once called it, “the better angels of our nature.”

For America to live up to its true promise, it has to include the contributions of all its people, not just a few chosen by the imagined destiny of their coloring and background.

But all people. I call it the value of a single human being.

I’m not voting for Obama because he is black. I’m voting for him because I respect what I perceive as his openness, and integrity. But the fact that he is black is a plus. There has never been a black president before.

Up until now, I never thought there would be.

Obama won’t end anger, or racism, or partisan attacks, or arrogance, or wrong thinking.

He will demonstrate, however, that a person of his color can sit in the White House and not only more than hold his own with those who have gone before, but achieve his own positive marks on history, knowing as we know that with any human activity, it will be human, and thus fallible.

The big difference is in attitude.

Obama’s biggest attraction perhaps is that he seems more open to new possibilities, and for that reason, appears to embrace the future, rather than be threatened by it.

I consider myself not just an American, but also a citizen of the world. Obama more clearly demonstrates this concept.

The very fact he is running at all is something of a miracle, and gives me great pride as an American. It generates the possibility that this country can finally come closer to what its Founding Fathers said it should be. It establishes hope.

First of all, there’s hope for me if I can feel this way. Perhaps I can soar beyond the narrow shackles of what I had been taught. Maybe I can become the kind of person I think I can be, kinder, braver, more giving. Perhaps I can learn something, despite my age.

If Obama can run, maybe I can do these things.

Only children are totally open-minded, probably the reason for Obama’s popularity among the young.

I’m voting for Obama not based on ideology or statistical claims and counter-claims or the usual election-day rhetoric, exaggerations or grandstanding, but because he represents a cleaner break with the past, and its confining, hide-bound limitations. The future should be welcomed, not feared.

I think that by confronting these past divisions head-on, which an Obama electoral victory would surely bring, will allow the country to rise a little farther away from pettiness, and into the light of potential.

That’s what hope is all about.

Copyright 2008 Sammonsays.

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An LA Times Editorial
Published: September 28, 2008

As the Bush administration attempts to stabilize the nation’s economy, we are witness to the final chapter of a period of perverse and dishonest leadership that has used its own crises to justify the expansion of its own power. This was a president who came to office on promises of modesty — who championed a “humble nation,” scorned nation building and promised a more limited role for government in the lives of its citizens. Then he presided over a six-year attempt to tear down and rebuild the nations of Afghanistan and Iraq, and now has embarked on the most profound expansion of the federal government’s role in the private economy since the Depression.

In both cases, the pattern is the same. Ineptitude led to crisis; crisis then became the argument for the radical expansion of executive power. The administration insisted that it exercise its new authority with a minimum of scrutiny by Congress, the courts or the public.

In the so-called war on terror, that has meant the abdication of our most basic American principles. We have forfeited privacy and honor — the administration has monitored phones and e-mails without warrants and has secreted prisoners in foreign lands, arguing that they deserved none of our protections even while in our custody. As a nation, we have stooped to torture (while debating the meaning of the word) and refused to recognize one of our most basic Anglo-American notions, the principle of habeas corpus (thankfully, the Supreme Court, seven of whose members are Republicans, drew the line at that abomination). We have held prisoners in detention without trial, without charge, without end. In so doing, we have antagonized the world and debased America’s moral authority to lead.

The same administration responsible for these catastrophes has over the last month nationalized the largest source of funding for mortgages and the largest insurance company on the planet. And it proposed to intervene even more dramatically in the nation’s economy by having the Treasury Department — with no court, congressional or public oversight — relieve financial institutions of the troubled mortgages and related securities that have locked up the lending system.

There is no doubt about the depth and range of the crisis that provokes these calls for government action. The gyrations of the stock market have been dismaying, and the threat to the country’s financial institutions — and everyone who borrows from or invests in them — is real. Still, the audacity of this administration demanding expanded powers and curtailed accountability is a wonder to behold. The bitter irony is that this crisis warrants dramatic intervention, but President Bush’s record makes him difficult to trust even when he’s right.

These troubles are about more than a president who is unfaithful to his word. Bush has transformed the balance of power in our government. We are seeing the erection of an imperial presidency, immune from oversight when it fights terrorists and when it rescues banks.

Politically, these developments raise two questions: Which candidate to succeed Bush benefits most by the events of recent weeks? And which candidate, if either, would have the strength to roll back these expansions of presidential power if elected?

To the first question, the answer seems to be Barack Obama, though only modestly. Obama’s poll numbers have inched up in recent days as voters have taken stock of a frighteningly complex economic meltdown and been left to wonder what to think of John McCain’s abrupt, halting responses — as McCain saw it, the “fundamentals” of the economy were sound one moment, at risk the next.

Questions about McCain’s judgment in recent days have only been deepened by the performances of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. She has struggled in her rare public appearances, and her selection risks appearing all the more reckless and cynical when held against the seriousness of this financial crisis. Even McCain’s campaign “suspension” seemed like gamesmanship. He said he was rushing to Washington, but took his time, and the talks derailed soon after he arrived. He proclaimed that the situation was so dire he would not return to the stump until an agreement was reached, then did precisely what he said he wouldn’t. It was not an impressive week for the Straight Talk Express.

Still, Obama has hardly run away with this issue, and the economic news exposes his weaknesses as well. He is, after all, untested by executive crisis and a freshman senator of limited achievement in government. Voters may well blanch at his relative inexperience, given the gravity of these times. Indeed, it is telling that in a week when his opponent flailed, Obama made scant headway in the polls.

On the matter of which candidate could be trusted to roll back the excessive powers that Bush has aggregated, Obama is vague and McCain is exasperating. McCain has properly condemned the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and said he would close it, but when the court granted detainees there the rights of habeas corpus, McCain denounced the ruling as “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.” He condemned torture, but then, with the campaign underway, voted against legislation to limit the CIA’s use of coercive interrogation. Those oscillations do not reassure.

Obama, meanwhile, is more consistent and encouraging but offers few specifics. He pledges to close Guantanamo, restore habeas corpus and end the invasions of privacy undertaken in the name of fighting terrorism. Those are welcome positions and provide some hope that he would roll back Bush’s excesses. But while he pledges allegiance to the separation of powers, Obama has said little about how to honor that pledge. Rare is the politician who willingly cedes authority, and we have not heard enough from Obama to be convinced he’s that rare person.

These are not abstractions. They are the legacy of this grim epoch, one that should be equally offensive to conservatives and liberals. George Bush promised humility and delivered arrogance. The next president must not.

The United States of Arrogance

The hypocrisy of U.S. democracy and self-righteous foreign policy is troubling the world. The U.S. Dept of Defense, the world’s largest landlord, operates 737 military bases in 63 countries with military personnel in 156 nations. America is ready to strike any country to procure natural resources to extend its empire, keep the dollar afloat, and ensure its utopia. The military-industrial complex has put over 80,000 innocent Iraqis and 4,000 U.S. troops in an early grave, while putting itself in $9 trillion in debt. Alienating humanity and creating new terrorists daily, American foreign policy is a nightmare! Sexually abusing and raping in Abu Ghraib, using chemical white phosphorus (its own WMD) in Fallujah, destroying homes, ransacking mosques, and killing innocents across Iraq–America is winning the war of terror. Unprecedented soldier suicides attest to a disenchanted military. At home the FBI violates civil liberties, while the FDA approves deadly drugs, and CIA concocts phony “slam dunk” intel for war.

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