Four years ago, on the eve of the victory of Obama in the2008 election, I attempted to define what America is. It is renewal, Isuggested, the place where impossible stories get written. It is the overcomingof history, the leaving behind of war and barriers, in the name of a futurefreed from the vengeful clamp of memory.
It is reinvention, the absorption of one identity insomething larger “ the notion that “out of many, we are truly one.” Americansare decent people. They’re not interested in where you came from. They’reinterested in who you are. At the close of this endless campaign “ on one ofthose crisp, clear New York days where the glimmer of possibility seems to lurkat the tapering edge of the city’s ruler-straight canyons “ it is worthrecalling that America, alone among nations, is an idea; and that idea dieswhen hope and possibility disappear. Asa naturalized American who recalls the 1,000 faces in the room where I sworethe oath of allegiance and how they mapped the world and yet shared some essentialnotion of humanity, I confess to the convert’s zeal. I had to take a dictationback then to become a citizen. It was supposed to prove my command of English.The second sentence was, “I plan to work very hard every day.” So here I amwriting, loneliest of tasks.
It has been a hard, uneven road from 2008. The idealismvested in America’s first black president was also vested in an introverted manwhose talent for the deal-making that oils the wheels of politics provedlimited. Barack Obama is the least “political” president since Jimmy Carter.The United States is as divided today as it was four years ago “ over economicpolicy, of course, but more deeply over social policy: the whole regressiveGod-invoking push of the Republican right against a woman’s right to abortion,gay rights, marriage equality and so on. One nation sometimes feels like two.
But even with its debt and division and uneven recovery theUnited States has come a long way from the abyss of 2008. Obama is a man morelikely than not to make smart decisions. He’s also lucky. Sandy blew in a weekbefore the election and by the time it blew out Mittmentum was dented,Bloomberg on board and New Jersey’s Republican governor cooing. There have beenbig achievements: the winding down of the wars, health reform, getting Osamabin Laden, and restoring the battered American idea.
Obama has fallen short of the pledge he made in 2009 whensaid we “cannot keep this country safe unless we enlist the power of our mostfundamental values.” Drone killings have nothing to do with due process. Butthe country no longer inhabits the “dark side” of torture and rampantrenditions. By allowing gays to serve openly in the military and by signinglegislation to back equal pay for equal work for women, Obama has strived tomake the United States more inclusive.
America turns its back on its core ideas when itdiscriminates against women or on the basis of people’s sexual orientation.Romney led a campaign that has said everything and the contrary, embracing warthen peace, changing positions on Obamacare, refusing to reveal how he willoffset tax cuts. He wanted to deny women the right to abortion. His America, itseems, would be more unequal and divided.
Last week I wrote about the sharp divisions in the Jewishcommunity of Cleveland, Ohio, where the Senate candidacy of a young right-wingJewish ex-Marine named Josh Mandel has exacerbated the tensions of a closecampaign where some Jews have tried hard to portray Obama as anti-Israel.Mandel, who has campaigned against the Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown, isrelated by marriage to the influential Ratner family.
After the column a paid ad in the form of an open letter toMandel from several members of the Ratner family appeared in the ClevelandJewish News. It read in part:
``Dear Josh, Your cousins, Ellen Ratner and CholeneEspinoza, are among the many wonderful couples whose rights you do notrecognize. They were married almost eight years ago in Massachusetts, at a timewhen it was the only state in the nation to allow same-sex marriage. Theirwedding, like yours, was a beautiful and happy occasion for all of us in ourfamily. It hurts us that you would embrace discrimination against them.
“We are equally distressed by your belief that gay men andwomen should not be allowed to serve openly in the military. Like you, Cholenespent many years in the armed forces. A graduate of the Air Force Academy andan accomplished pilot, she became the second woman in history to fly the U-2reconnaissance plane. And yet, you have argued that she, like many gay andlesbian soldiers, should be forced to live a life of secrecy and lies.”
The letter embodies the spirit that overcame slavery and JimCrow and has made America an ever-reinvented land always pushing to the nextfrontier. It is cause for hope.
Roger Cohen is a British-born journalist and author. He is acolumnist for The New York Times and International Herald Tribune
