Obama and the people

In 1960, I jammed into the upper balcony of the University of Wisconsin field house with thousands of others to see the tiny figure of John F. Kennedy. In 1992, I stood for two hours in the hot sun with my young children for a chance to shake Bill Clinton’s hand. Last night, Barak Obama was in Madison, but I didn’t go. It just didn’t sound like fun to have to jostle with 19,000 others and wait two hours to see the next president of the United States. I must be getting old.

Instead I listened to most of the speech in the car, so I may have missed some important parts. But what I heard – and didn’t hear – was a little troubling. Maybe I just missed it, but I didn’t hear Obama’s clarion call for a populist movement “You must be the change you seek.” Instead I heard him promise that everything would be different in Washington if he were president. Electing President Obama will not change Washington. Creating a popular movement for change at the grassroots will – at least for a while. Bill Clinton failed because he couldn’t or didn’t leverage his immense personal popularity into a movement for change.

I hope Obama has not forgotten that he is winning because he is riding a wave of people power. He is not winning because he is so smart or so capable, but because he has provided a rallying point for the immense pent-up frustration of a nation that is tired of being taken for fools. He is the lightening rod; we are the lightening. Let’s not get the two confused.