January 30, 2013 at 5:54 p.m.
President Obama, sure you're not talking about us?
Yet one of the many remarkable and exciting things about him is how he speaks directly to us, all the way over here in Bermuda, with uncanny insight and precision.
"In the end, that's what this election is about: Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?"
Bermuda elections have been giant monuments to cynicism. Bermudians know it, and the politicians know it too, and yet nobody seems to be able to help themselves from carrying on this self-destructive behaviour. Maybe President Obama's victory, and stupendous popularity, can shame us into changing our ways.
"Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential."
It's almost as though President Obama was fed up with the UBP and the culture of wealth accumulation that thrived under them... and just as frustrated as the rest of us that the political revolution of 1998 ushered in more (much more) of the same.
"I don't take a dime of their [lobbyist] money, and when I am president, they won't find a job in my White House."
I'm beginning to think that President Obama is shaking his finger at us in Bermuda, where the money politicians receive is unknown, unreported and uncontrollable - and nobody but President Obama seems to care.
"I'm in this race not just to hold an office, but to gather with you to transform a nation."
Who told the President that most Bermudians agree on most of the things that need to be changed in Bermuda? Yet think back on all the elections you remember: Almost every one of them was about who would hold office, and nothing else.
"Issues are never simple. One thing I'm proud of is that very rarely will you hear me simplify the issues."
President Obama, stop picking on us! Okay, we're guilty of over-simplifying just about every issue, especially the complicated and controversial ones. One side (our side) is always right and the other side is dead wrong, obstinate, pig-headed, inherently evil, and probably racist too.
"There is not a liberal America and a conservative America - there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America - there's the United States of America."
President Obama is seeing straight through us again. All of us, I think, are as guilty as it gets for pigeon-holing just about any category of people we can get hands on: the whites, the blacks, the Portuguese, the expats, the unions, the managers....
"Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands."
Who told President Obama that we ignore planning laws and regulations, build more buildings than we need, chop down trees for sport, hardly bother to recycle, can't control traffic, burn smoky diesel to power our air-conditioners and hardly have any solar panels at all?
"We must make sure that people who have the grades, the desire and the will, but not the money, can still get the best education possible."
Okay, Mr. President, we know this already. But we're working to fix it. Seriously. We've been doing it for years!
"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."
How much time do we sit complaining about the way things are, but doing nothing to lift a finger to make things better?
"We need to steer clear of this poverty of ambition, where people want to drive fancy cars and wear nice clothes and live in nice apartments but don't want to work hard to accomplish these things."
You wouldn't be talking about us Bermudians again, would you, President Obama?
"What Washington needs is adult supervision."
So does the House of Assembly, and most of our Cabinet Ministers as well.
"Yes we can!"
And that's it, straight and simple: Things don't have to remain the way they are. They can change. And so can we, all the way over here in Bermuda. We have to.
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