ANALYSIS/OPINION:
Ever since Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton conceded defeat and endorsed Sen. Barack Obama on June 7, I really did try hard to follow Mrs. Clinton’s urgings and to move beyond the fifth stage of grief to be enthusiastic about the Obama candidacy.
To remind those who forget, the “five stages of grief” were first categorized by the 1969 book “On Death and Dying,” authored by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross: They are: (1) denial, (2) anger, (3) bargaining, (4) depression and (5) acceptance.
Most of us supporting Mrs. Clinton had reached No. 5 by the time of the Denver convention, but what we knew in our head had not yet fully reached our heart. As Mr. Obama himself said when he met with key Clinton fundraisers and supporters the week after the Clinton concession, he did not expect that passion to be easily transferred to him - and that he would have to earn it.
Mrs. Clinton’s hard-hitting and gracious speech Tuesday night and former President Bill Clinton’s out-of-the-park speech Wednesday night endorsing Mr. Obama made things a lot easier for me and lots of other Clinton supporters.
But it was my oldest son, Seth Lewis Davis, who at Invesco Field at Mile High successfully challenged me to take the next step. He had supported Mr. Obama even before the senator had declared for president - not because he didn’t still admire the Clintons, but because “Barack Obama speaks to me and my generation.” And so father and son debated, at times rather vigorously, over most of the 2007-08 campaigning.
Seth knew that, since Mrs. Clinton’s campaign ended, I was doing a lot of TV appearances as a Fox News Channel political analyst advocating Mr. Obama’s cause versus Sen. John McCain’s. He also knew that I am not at my best without both head and heart equally committed. And as only a family member can know best, he could see I wasn’t yet fully emotionally engaged.
“Dad, you have to feel the passion,” he said to me on Thursday night as we sat in the stadium in the late afternoon. Then came the Obama speech. Three themes hit me strongly:
First, Mr. Obama reminded me why my dad and mom taught us around the dinner table that the Democratic Party was our family’s choice: because Democrats are the party that cares most for the little guy, the average American.
Emblematic was the series of examples offered by Mr. Obama of economic problems faced by average Americans. He pointed out that Mr. McCain’s conservative philosophy basically says to the less well-off in our society: “You’re on your own - pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” In response, Mr. Obama said powerfully: “Well, what if they have no boots?”
Second, Mr. Obama challenged Mr. McCain on the issues, but not by personally attacking him. He said that it wasn’t that Mr. McCain didn’t care - it was that he didn’t know or didn’t get it. This is the kind of new politics Mr. Obama promised from Day One of his campaign - a rejection of the previous hyper-partisan politics of personal destruction.
And finally, Mr. Obama’s speech occurred on the 45th anniversary of the historic 1963 “March on Washington” for civil rights. I had gone to the march on a pre-dawn train ride from Newark, N.J., as a 17-year-old high school graduate. I stood just several hundred feet from Martin Luther King when he delivered his unforgettable “I Have a Dream” speech.
So on Thursday night at the end of Mr. Obama’s speech, I could feel only a sense of wonder that finally we could live up to King’s inspiring words in that speech - we could elect a black American as president based on the quality of character, not on the color of his skin.
And I felt the passion Seth has been waiting for me to feel. I was proud to be an American. Proud to be a Democrat.
Mr. McCain’s strange pick of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential nominee raises serious questions about his judgment. Mrs. Palin is younger and has less foreign policy experience than Mr. Obama. As a result, the selection may remove the experience issue from the campaign, especially given Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s contrasting national domestic and foreign policy/national defense expertise.
Certainly Mr. McCain cannot seriously think that picking a pro-life and pro-gun candidate will automatically attract Clinton voters simply because she is a woman. That will strike many Clinton supporters, men as well as women, as both wrong and patronizing.
Whatever happens in this election, the unified Democratic Party coming out of the convention clearly contradicts the predictions of all the pundits and bloviators who predicted that Mrs. Clinton’s decision to continue running through all the primaries would be irreparably divisive. You know who you are. It would nice if you stood up and said you were wrong.
My suggestion to readers: Don’t hold your breath for that to happen.
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