The country's still a disaster. Why is everyone smiling?
By Mark Morford - San Francisco Chronicle, November 12, 2008 The best part: Each and every time, it's been almost wholly spontaneous, an outbreak, a burst, the unexpected thing that you haven't felt in years and which, in many ways, can't really believe you're experiencing at all. It's smiling, laughing, actual cheering among the normally jaded and the wary whenever Obama's voice is heard, or when his name comes up on the radio, in print, in a song, on the sidewalk -- anywhere at all. It's a relatively surreal sense of Can This Really Be True? Is that young, calm, rock-solid, intellectual black guy really our new president? Are they really expecting more than a million people to attend his inauguration, the most in American history? What do you make of that? You simply gotta acknowledge. Because it's no longer just fluffy hope. It's not really just joy. It's not even giddy anticipation. That was before the election. Now it's all those and a few dozen more, wrapped in a great big ball of shimmering disbelief. No doubt, Obama is a historic figure. But I think it's what surrounds him that feels even more historic, the astounding rush of exhilaration and gratification that flooded the nation -- and the world -- after he swept the election, a tidal wave of gratitude and relief borne in large part from the recognition that America is not, in fact, the nation Bush so violently tried to make us into, that dumbed-down, divided, rancorous brat, the irresponsible and dangerous thug of the world. Who knew? Here's one remarkable sidebar, just one of a thousand. I noticed a particular trend right around Election Day, a pattern, a sentiment expressed among the multitudes of emotions flooding the national bloodstream. It took the form of a simple phrase I heard repeated over and over again, from the most jaded newspaper editor to burned-out political wonks to those who've been doing this sort of work -- activism, elections, polling, reportage, hardcore beltway Sturm und Drang -- for 20 or 30 years, who say they've seen it all, every possible angle and slimy political trick, to the point where absolutely nothing surprises them anymore. This is what they said: -- I've never seen anything like it. -- It's everywhere. I read it when dozens of major newspapers, by sheer overwhelming demand, actually had to restart their printing presses the day after the election to publish hundreds of thousands of additional commemorative editions for delirious collectors, instant history buffs, regular Americans who wanted to connect more tangibly to the pulse of the zeitgeist. The Chicago Trib printed an extra 200,000 copies. USA Today printed 380,000 extra copies, and still sold out. The Washington Post printed 350,000 extra as people lined up around the block to buy their editions straight from the press itself -- and then a day later they printed 250,000 more. "I've never seen anything like it," said just about everyone anywhere near the building. Here at home, the Chronicle was no different. By mid-morning on November 5, our initial print run of 40,000 extra copies was long gone. In fact, so heavy was demand that we ended up restarting the presses twice, first to crank our more copies of the regular paper (another 38K), then again for the special edition (another 60K on top of the initial 50K). All told, the Chron has moved upwards of 230,000 extra papers ... and still counting. And the marketing department went: We've never seen anything like it. Translation: This is not just a big, warm, fuzzy liberal hug. This is light years from mere short-lived gloating over a long-overdue Democratic victory, or just a handful of overexcited libs taking home a souvenir. This is something else, something electric and enthralling, a preternatural vibe journalists from all over the globe have been struggling to capture since the Obama rocket began its phenomenal rise. The best part: This feeling has roots, is anchored in the hard concrete of reality and fact. It's already getting ready to pay off. Like this: One of Obama's transition teams has already targeted roughly 200 Bush-era horrors to be immediately reversed, reinstated, undone, repaired, restored, cleaned up and brought back to respectability the moment Obama takes office. Stem-cell research, gag orders regarding abortion, Guantanamo, even California's EPA debacle regarding waivers on fuel economy standards, all significant, long-standing Bush abuses and all things Obama is expected to immediately correct by executive order. I know what you're thinking: 200 is a mere drop. Two hundred doesn't even begin to think about the dream of the possibility of making a dent in the list of savage damages the Bush era has dumped on the country like a bucket of nails on a flowerbed. But it's a start. A running start. And it will only grow from there. Can you imagine it yet? No more pandering to the puling religious right (or the extreme left), no decisions aimed at turning America even more rogue and belligerent and globally disrespected, no moves carefully calculated to bolster the president's own ego or image, nothing designed solely to mollify corporate cronies in Big Energy, Big Oil, the military. And finally, nothing carefully calculated in some dank basement merely to serve some sort of nefarious, extremist, long-term plot for violent world domination, a la Karl Rove's now-laughable "permanent Republican majority." What a thing. Let's keep it a little bit in check. I certainly don't expect to agree with everything Obama does, every appointment he makes or policy he issues. I already don't. As he himself said, he will not be a perfect president. But right now, there is every reason to believe that whatever he does, it will have been thoughtfully considered, balanced, worked through with the same levelheadedness and intellectual integrity he demonstrated during what is now recognized as the most assured, successful and extraordinary presidential campaign in history. We have zero reason to doubt it. To which there is really only one thing you can add: -- I've never seen anything like it. -- http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/11/12/notes111208.DTL http://tinyurl.com/6nnmjm
