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On February 4th, the day before Super Tuesday, Dave Matthews sent out a brief but passionate email to 1 million of his fans endorsing Barack Obama for president. Born in South Africa under apartheid, Matthews witnessed first-hand how racial politics can devastate an entire nation — and how a single, eloquent leader can transcend decades of brutal divisiveness. We caught up with Matthews the day after Obama gave his landmark speech on the role of race in American politics.
You've supported candidates before, but you seem
especially passionate about Obama. What is it about him that has
inspired you?
It's a quality he has that seems to elevate the people around him.
The biggest argument that people can lay against him is his lack of
qualifications, which is such an empty argument. The most important
qualification a candidate can possess is being able to inspire
people to want to do things for the country. The great presidential
speeches by people like Kennedy or Lincoln — what made them
great were their words, and the fact that they moved mountains with
their words. We don't remember JFK's qualifications. We don't
remember his connections or his experience in the political arena.
What we remember are the qualities that made him stand apart from
all that. That's why people are being inspired by Obama. He makes
me feel like it is possible to change the world.
That's quite the opposite from what I feel about the rest of the candidates. I feel like they're saying [adopts a deep, pompous voice], "It's the real world, it is what it is, you need to have experience in order to be able to move forward." What a bunch of crap. I don't want someone who's experienced in the present-day arena of politics — it's hopelessly failed this country. Both sides of the aisle, without question, have dismally let the American people down. We need a person with fresh ideas and an incredible eloquence that really cuts to the core of so many issues with just a real frankness.
But what about the people who say that Obama is just
empty rhetoric?
The argument that's laid against him so often is, "Come on, be
realistic buddy, your head's in the clouds." This idea of, "Oh,
you're inspiring people — nice job, but to be president you
need to be more qualified to bore people to death and get nothing
done. Oh, you want to change the world? The best way to change the
world is to know how flop around with the other dead fish." I mix
metaphors because I'm semi-retarded. But I really think Obama could
move mountains, not because he's some kind of spectacular
superhuman, but because he moves people in a real way.
Of course, it can also be quite unnerving when someone speaks in such powerful ways about possibilities. I can see how some people are like, "Wait a second, this guy, he's using crazy talk like 'hope' and 'inspiration' and 'change,' and using them in ways that makes them sound like real things!" The status quo has its attractions, even if it's a bit uncomfortable. This bed of nails that I sleep on is not very comfortable, but at least it's a bed.
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What did you think of the big speech Obama gave yesterday on race?
I was almost moved to tears listening to him take something that could have derailed anyone and turn it into such an opportunity to talk about real issues that face America, things that have been here forever — forever as far as the length our little history. He put it so beautifully. And he wrote the speech himself. Now there's a novel idea. Why does he sound so honest when he speaks? Maybe because he writes what he says, because what he's saying are his own words.
You were born in South Africa when the country was still
under apartheid. How does that affect the way you see Obama and
this moment in American history?
Race has been an issue forced upon me by my environment. Growing up
as a white South African, I learned the absurdity of racism and the
ugliness of bigotry. I get this sense of possibility with Obama
that reminds me of when I was younger, when Nelson Mandela was
finally out of prison. There was all this fear and confusion and
worry and horror surrounding the future of South Africa, but the
potential for a bloodbath was dissipated by the truly honest ideas
laid down by Mandela. The clarity with which he addressed the
future made everybody pause, and that was one of the reasons that
the transition from apartheid was relatively peaceful. Great
leaders have the ability to do that.
You spent much of 2004 working to get George Bush out of
the White House. What did that experience teach you about
politics?
Back then, the motivation was getting rid of Bush, of being against
everything that he stood for. This time, I'm truly for something.
Electing Obama will so radically change how the world views us, in
a positive way. The rest of the world was stunned when the Bush
administration was re-elected. The emperor has no clothes, but damn
if thirty-odd percent of us still believe that he's not naked. It's
evidence of what an incredible machine they have created of
fear.
I don't like to call myself a Democrat or Republican, because to say I'm on one side over the other is like choosing a preference between broken toilets. Real change has been a comedy in American politics for the last three decades. When I look at Obama, I feel like, "Wow, here's this man who's going to try to break down some walls and try and revive the Constitution after the three-decade-long beating it has taken. Maybe we can finally resuscitate that poor old dusty piece of paper that?s been kicked into the corner for a long time."
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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.