The obvious solution to Joe Biden’s over-the-hill problem: We rewind to 2008 and pull a switcheroo. Make Uncle Joe the presidential nominee and Obama the running mate. That way, we get Biden at a much sprier 65 from 2008-2016 and Obama at a more seasoned 55 when he succeeds Biden in 2017.
And then Obama would be running for re-election now. Sigh.
Forgive the wishful thinking. I had my journalism students read coverage of the 2000 and 2008 elections yesterday. I also showed them Obama’s victory speech. Forget politics, I told them. This is about watching a master orator.
I meant to show the first few minutes of the speech, and wound up letting it play through. The best part, as some of you may recall, is toward the end, when the president-elect invokes Ann Nixon Cooper, age 106.
“She was born just a generation past slavery,” Obama intones, “a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn’t vote for two reasons — because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.”
He then takes us through all this woman had seen: the Dust Bowl and the Depression; the New Deal and Pearl Harbor; “the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma”; Dr. King and men on the moon; the fall of the Berlin Wall and the age of the Internet.
“And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change.”
I’m not the weepy type, but I get teary every time I watch that speech.
The Obama presidency did not deliver as much as many of us had hoped, but then, how could it? Mario Cuomo’s formulation, “You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose” applies: not easy to buck the status quo in Washington.
**
I took my other class to the HUB to look in on the voting. I told them about the line that snaked out the hall, through the building and out onto the street in 2008. Don’t expect anything like that this year, I warned them.
Again, sigh. I hate the term “off-year” election. I hate that 75 percent of eligible voters sit out these local races, typically, when it’s at the borough and county level where decisions are made that can most affect the day-to-day quality of people’s lives. But local elections lack the glamor of the presidential race, so most of us ignore them.
(Old-timers will recall that Mayor Bill Welch used to say that if Penn State students registered in State College, they could grab every seat on borough council and run the town – but it’ll never happen.)
As of 3 p.m. on Tuesday, about 200 people had voted in the HUB, including, while we were there, Irvin Moore, the guy who, having gotten out of prison after 52 years, never takes any of the rights and privileges of life “back in the world” for granted.
Judge of Elections Wendy Azzara told us many students – and, perhaps, many people who aren’t students – think that once they’re registered, they can vote anywhere, and are dismayed when they show up somewhere other than their assigned polling place and are turned away. That seems a fixable problem, but as this New York Times “op-doc” shows, we seem to want to make it harder for people to vote, not easier.
**
Speaking of nostalgia, coverage of the 2000 and 2008 elections reminds us of what it’s like for a candidate to lose gracefully. John McCain told his supporters he “had the honor of calling” the president-elect to congratulate him. When his supporters booed, he shushed them.
“The American people have spoken, and they have spoken clearly,” he said. “In a contest as long and difficult as this campaign has been, his success alone commands my respect for his ability and perseverance. But that he managed to do so by inspiring the hopes of so many millions of Americans, who had once wrongly believed that they had little at stake or little influence in the election of an American president, is something I deeply admire and commend him for achieving.”
A far cry from 2020, no?
Even in 2000, when Al Gore had every right to question whether George W. Bush had won the presidency fair and square, the Democratic nominee took the high road, at least publicly:
”No matter what the outcome,” Gore said, “America will make the transition to a new administration with dignity, with full respect for the freely expressed will of the people,
and with pride in the democracy we are privileged to share.”
It’s good to remind ourselves that our politicians are capable of better than what we’ve witnessed these past few years.
May such days of relative grace come again.
