And then I saw him speak.
Years later, after writing dozens upon dozens of presidential speeches, it would become impossible to listen to rhetoric without editing it in my head. On that historic Iowa evening, Obama began with a proclamation: “They said this day would never come.” Rereading those words today, I have questions. Who were “they,” exactly? Did they really say “never”? Because if they thought an antiwar candidate with a robust fund-raising operation could never win a divided three-way Democratic caucus, particularly with John Edwards eating into Hillary Clinton’s natural base of support among working-class whites, then they didn’t know what they were talking about.
All this analysis would come later, though, along with stress-induced insomnia and an account at the Navy Mess. At the time, I was spellbound. The senator continued:
“At this defining moment in history, you have done what the cynics said you couldn’t do.” He spoke like presidents in movies. He looked younger than my dad. I didn’t have time for a second thought, or even a first one. I simply believed.
Barack Obama spoke for the next twelve minutes, and except for a brief moment when the landing gear popped out and I thought we were going to die, I was riveted. He told us we were one people. I nodded knowingly at the gentleman in the middle seat. He told us he would expand health care by bringing Democrats and Republicans together. I was certain it would happen as he described. He looked out at a sea of organizers and volunteers.
“You did this,” he told them, “because you believed so deeply in the most American of ideas—that in the face of impossible odds, people who love this country can change it.”
Like most twenty-one-year-olds, I was no stranger to the sudden, all-consuming crush. “There’s this girl,” I would gush to friends who tolerated that sort of thing. “She’s from California, and I once spent a week in Washington State! Can you believe how much we have in common?” Watching Obama speak, my attraction was electoral rather than physical. But in politics, as in other things, the heart wants what it wants.
I do love this country! I thought. I can change it! It’s like he’s known me my whole life!
As we neared the runway, I tried to make sense of what had just happened. I was born in the tail end of the Reagan years, when government was not the solution but the problem. I cast my first vote during the Bush years, when “You are either with us or with the terrorists” was applied to foreign and domestic opponents alike. Now, a few thousand feet over New York City, a candidate for president had told me we were not a collection of red states and blue states, but the United States. Together, we could build something far greater than we could on our own.
By the time we emerged from the Jetway, I was one of those people who would not shut up about Barack Obama. I wasn’t alone. Across campus, across America, an army of idealists had arisen, a zombie horde craving hope and change.
Our critics would later mock the depths of our devotion. Obamabots, they’d call us. And really, weren’t they right? Becoming obsessed with Barack Obama wasn’t a choice I made. Rather, it was like starring in one of those sleeper-agent-killer-robot movies that comes out every few years. A switch is flipped, long-dormant code is activated, and suddenly the mild-mannered main character can disembowel adversaries with a spoon. I’ve never disemboweled anybody, not even people who actually use the phrase, “Find me on LinkedIn.” Still, I identify with that killer robot. I had been preprogrammed with the ability to ask friends for donations or to call people at random to tell them how to vote. Now, my switch had been flipped.
When I got back to campus, I joined our chapter of Obama for America. Organizers handed out call sheets, pieces of paper covered in strangers’ numbers and names, and each night I dialed until my fingers were sore. These days I’m more likely to receive these calls than make them. I hang up so quickly, you’d think someone was trying to poison me over the phone. But in 2008, that unicorn of political seasons, Democrats were happy to take unsolicited advice from a stranger who had been legally drinking for all of four months.
I came to think of men and women I cold-called as “my voters.” If they didn’t pick up, I’d leave a helpful, minute-long voice mail. If they did pick up, I’d deliver the exact same message, only with room for questions at the end. I tailored my pitch in small ways. Tiffany might hear about Obama’s ability to bring people together. Tucker might hear about his midwestern roots. Treshawn might hear the word historic mentioned three or four times in a single sentence.
Mostly, though, I talked about Iraq. On the eve of the war, Hillary Clinton voted to give George W. Bush authority to invade. Was she motivated by principle? By her desire to seem tough? No one could tell. Contrast that with Obama. In 2002, when opposing Bush was political suicide, he called Iraq a “dumb war.” Being president took two things, I told my voters: judgment and courage. With just one speech, my candidate had demonstrated both.
“What about experience? Hasn’t he only been in the Senate for, like, two years?”
“I don’t think that matters,” I assured them. I would have set myself on fire before allowing a sophomore to direct my improv comedy group. When it came to running the country, however, I was pretty sure a freshman senator could figure it out.
I graded my voters on a one-to-five scale. Fives supported Hillary. Threes were undecided. Ones supported us. In a week or two of phone calls I covered almost every imaginable issue: electability, education, infrastructure, GMOs. The secret to these conversations, I learned, was to substitute personal detail for genuine expertise.
“Of course I support America’s farmers. I eat salad all the time!”
“As someone with four grandparents, I can’t afford not to worry about social security!”
That sort of thing.
There was one issue my fellow Democrats and I rarely discussed but was always on our minds. Race. I was calling on behalf of an African American candidate who had won in Iowa, where the electorate was more than 90 percent white. This was impossible. Yet it had been done. And that was at the heart of my candidate’s appeal. Obama wasn’t just fighting for change. He was change. He was the messenger and message all at once. It’s one thing to follow a prophet who speaks glowingly of a promised land. It’s another thing entirely to join him once he parts the sea.