I must confess: while I am very glad that Barack Obama has been elected president, at the same time there is a twinge of sadness. For a political junkie like me, there is a distinct sense of withdrawal, something I have also been dealing with substance-wise since I quit caffeine three weeks ago. Just as I am always craving a cup of coffee, I am also frantically checking the blogosphere for the latest polls and updates and thinking about new voters I could be registering (we only got ballots to about half the undergrads, so they must be out there somewhere). As my Republican grandfather told me on election night, “You should switch sides so you have something to be excited about.” Since I am not yet willing to turn into Jim Smiley, the man in Mark Twain’s The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County who bets on a side of the argument just so he has a dog in the fight, I have been weighing the alternatives.
I have realized that there is still a lot out there to fight for. Racism, sexism, poverty, and inequality will all continue to exist. I hate to disappoint some people who are infected with the hope and change virus, but Mr. Obama cannot simply waive his wand and cure all of the ills that plague the world; he will have a tough enough time trying to fix America. Indeed, most of the battles that must be fought in the political arena will be waged at the state and local level, by people just like you and me. The recent banning of gay marriage in California due to the passage of Proposition 8, for example, is not an issue that the president is likely to deal with. It will take the hard work of young activists to work for an invalidation of the law or a new ballot initiative for the 2010 election. This, however, is only the tip of the iceberg.
While there are some issues that can be solved legally and politically, most of the structural problems we face in America can only be solved outside of the state. As Mr. Obama said in his victory speech, “There will be setbacks and false starts…we know the government can’t solve every problem.” There has to be a new commitment, especially among members of the youth generation, to alleviating injustice, and it cannot happen without people being willing to go out and confront the ugliness in society. We cannot merely sit back and say, “Obama won, everything will be all right, change is coming!” If we do, the agents of intolerance, through their political wing in the Republican Party, will be able to continue their agenda of oppression by calling us do-nothings, and rightfully so. If we do not want to backslide into the policies of the last eight years—and judging from the Electoral College margin, most of us do not—we need to help our new president make change a reality. Indeed, Mr. Obama put it best, “This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It can’t happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice.” If these words sound F.D.R.-like to you, you are correct in your thinking. The government alone could not lift America out of the Depression; citizens from all walks of life had to work together to use the country’s resources to forge a better future. If we want to lift ourselves out of the current economic crisis, we must do the same.