My Campaign Memories

It was hot, it was dirty, and it took a very long time to be over — but it's finally time to light that cigarette after the 2008 presidential race. In the end, this strange and bitterly fought campaign season was really about two things: the unbelievable, almost inexpressible incompetence of the Republican Party, and the commensurate rise, on the other side, of the remarkable figure Barack Obama. The latter wouldn't have happened without the former, and in that sense Obama is a creature of circumstance. In a different era, his hypercautious, corporate-friendly policies wouldn't have moved the world an inch in any direction. Instead, his rise came in a year when policy and ideology are almost irrelevant. Had he come out four years later or earlier, he might have been Geraldine Ferraro or John Kerry.

What makes the Obama story so powerful isn't just the fact that as a half-white, half-black man, his public journey to the top visibly tied together some of the more painful frayed ends of our past. It's that he ran his race with dignity and honor against people who didn't return the favor, facing a succession of opponents who feared losing more than shame and gave in to pretty much every possible temptation to go low and appeal to the worst in us.

I didn't always see it at the time. But thinking back on it now, I realize what an extraordinary accomplishment his getting this far has been. A man who wasn't great would have blown this a hundred times along the way. So would a person who wasn't extremely lucky. The historical seas literally parted for this Obama guy, with inconceivable idiocy and villainy littering the political shores on either side of him as he ascended to the pantheon of all-time American heroes simply by walking straight ahead and not being a dick. Looking back at my campaign notebooks, here are a few of the most memorable moments that illustrate the odd journey.