A Promised Land

by Barack Obama

I know that kids all around this country—Black kids, Hispanic kids, kids who don’t fit in—they’ll see themselves differently, too, their horizons lifted, their possibilities expanded. And that alone…that would be worth it.”

If we won, I thought, it would mean that my U.S. Senate campaign hadn’t just been dumb luck. If we won, it would mean that what had led me into politics wasn’t just a pipe dream, that the America I believed in was possible, that the democracy I believed in was within reach. If we won, it would mean that I wasn’t alone in believing that the world didn’t have to be a cold, unforgiving place, where the strong preyed on the weak and we inevitably fell back into clans and tribes, lashing out against the unknown and huddling against the darkness. If these beliefs were made manifest, then my own life made sense, and I could then pass on that promise, that version of the world, to my children.

I’d staked my claim in the presidential race, involved a big team of people, begged strangers for money, and propagated a vision I believed in. But I missed my wife. I missed my kids. I missed my bed, a consistent shower, sitting at a proper table for a proper meal. I missed not having to say the exact same thing the exact same way five or six or seven times a day.

Looking back, I realize I was doing what most of us tend to do when we’re uncertain or floundering: We reach for what feels familiar, what we think we’re good at.

Before a large audience of health workers, I stumbled, mumbled, hemmed and hawed onstage. Under pointed questioning, I had to confess that I didn’t yet have a definitive plan for delivering affordable healthcare.

Take whatever question they give you, give ’em a quick line to make it seem like you answered it…and then talk about what you want to talk about.”

Mitch, Marygrace, and Anne would later describe the particulars of their work—which included collectively screening all the unorthodox ideas Tewes routinely pitched at meetings. “He’d have ten a day,” Mitch would explain. “Nine were ridiculous, one would be genius.” Mitch

Tewes would set the tone for our Iowa operation—grassroots, no hierarchies, irreverent, and slightly manic.

politics could be less about power and positioning and more about community and connection.

care—its shoddy argument and nativist tone had me ripshit

She taught me to marry passion with reason, to not get overly excited when life was going well, and to not get too down when it went badly.

“THERE IS NOT a Black America and a white America and a Latino America and an Asian America. There’s the United States of America.”

How an emphasis on universal programs often meant benefits were less directly targeted to those most in need. How appealing to common interests discounted the continuing effects of discrimination and allowed whites to avoid taking the full measure of the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, and their own racial attitudes. How this left Black people with a psychic burden, expected as they were to constantly swallow legitimate anger and frustration in the name of some far-off ideal.

“Every generation is limited by what it knows,” Dr. Moss told me. “Those of us who were part of the movement, giants like Martin, lieutenants and foot soldiers like me…we are the Moses generation. We marched, we sat in, we went to jail, sometimes in defiance of our elders, but we were in fact building on what they had done. We got us out of Egypt, you could say. But we could only travel so far. “You, Barack, are part of the Joshua generation. You and others like you are responsible for the next leg of the journey. Folks like me can offer the wisdom of our experience. Perhaps you can learn from some of our mistakes. But ultimately it will be up to you, with God’s help, to build on what we’ve done, and lead our people and this country out of the wilderness.”

What message had generations of boys and girls received as they arrived at this school each day except for the certainty that, to those in power, they did not matter; that whatever was meant by the American Dream, it wasn’t meant for them?

Despite having been born and raised on American soil, shaped by this nation’s institutions and infused with its creed, despite the fact that their toiling hands and beating hearts contributed so much to the country’s economy and culture—despite all this, Du Bois writes, Black Americans remain the perpetual “Other,” always on the outside looking in, ever feeling their “two-ness,” defined not by what they are but by what they can never be.

the substance of patriotism mattered far more than the symbol.

Instead, they had taken possession of my likeness and made it a vessel for a million different dreams. I knew a time would come when I would disappoint them, falling short of the image that my campaign and I had helped to construct.

“Axe, I love you, but you’re a downer. Either grab a drink and sit down with us or get the fuck out of here.”

As I came to know Joe, though, I found his occasional gaffes to be trivial compared to his strengths.

And what became abundantly clear as soon as Sarah Palin stepped into the spotlight was that on just about every subject relevant to governing the country she had absolutely no idea what the hell she was talking about.

Palin’s nomination was troubling on a deeper level. I noticed from the start that her incoherence didn’t matter to the vast majority of Republicans; in fact, anytime she crumbled under questioning by a journalist, they seemed to view it as proof of a liberal conspiracy.

It was, of course, a sign of things to come, a larger, darker reality in which partisan affiliation and political expedience would threaten to blot out everything—your previous positions; your stated principles; even what your own senses, your eyes and ears, told you to be true.

It’s a place for sober deliberation, built to accommodate the weight of history.

“Two hundred and thirty-two years and they wait until the country’s falling apart before they turn it over to the brother!”

“Tell you what, though. It’s a heck of a ride you’re about to take. Nothing like it. You just have to remind yourself to appreciate it every day.”

Whenever he and Kennedy sat down to write, they told themselves, “Let’s make this good enough to be in a book of the great speeches someday.”

I remember staring up at the windows on the second floor, wondering if at that very moment someone might be looking down at us. I had tried to imagine what they might be thinking. Did they miss the rhythms of ordinary life? Were they lonely? Did they sometimes feel a jolt in their heart and wonder how it was that they had ended up where they were?

“The presidency is like a new car. It starts depreciating the minute you drive it off the lot.” To build early momentum, he had instructed our transition team to identify campaign promises I could fulfill with the stroke of a pen.

My supporters lacked all conviction, while my opponents were full of passionate intensity.