Dave Matthews Speaks Out for Barack Obama

Do you worry, based on your experience in 2004, about the kind of backlash musicians get when they support a candidate — people saying, "What do you know about politics, why should I care what a musician thinks?"
Musicians, although maybe some don?t believe it, are also citizens. We all have the right to say what we think and use whatever power we have to say it, just like politicians use whatever power they have, whatever millions of dollars they have, to make themselves heard. Just because they chose a life of — they would say "civil service," I might say "egomaniacal attempts to run the world" — doesn't make them more qualified than anybody else.

When you speak about Obama, it's almost like you're talking about a fellow musician — the power and eloquence of his words, the effect that they have to move people.
Yeah, I suppose so. I certainly think there's a musical quality to how Obama speaks. Kennedy had that power, Bishop Tutu had that power — that ability to make people go, "Oh," and want to listen. That alone, to me, makes him the most qualified. There's lots of us who can plow snow, and there's lots of us who can deliver boxes and push pencils around, but it's a rare jewel that can move us to be our very best. That's why I think it?s colossally important for us to have to have him as the next president.

So this isn't just a case of your wanting to see someone with African heritage in the White House, since as an immigrant you're ineligible to run for president?
[Laughs] No, no. If I actually wanted to run for president, I'd be rooting for a constitutional amendment to allow Arnold Schwarzenegger to run. The only thing that really is up against me, besides my place of birth, is the fact that I have a hard time tying a sentence together, so the idea of getting in front of people and moving them with a speech — that's above and beyond.