A Reason to Believe (22 page)

At that point, I had been asked by most of the Democratic candidates if I would endorse them. I had made no promises, mindful that contested primaries are treacherous waters to swim in. I was grateful to President Clinton for bringing me into his administration in a role I cared so much about. I admired Hillary Clinton. I had also come to know and respect Joe Biden, then the senior senator from Delaware. Nonetheless, I believed that Barack was uniquely qualified to provide inspirational leadership at
the national level, and as the evening wound down, I told Barack I would endorse him later in the fall in Boston.

On the way over to the Vineyard, I had talked with Diane about what advice I would give the candidate, and I wrote it down on a scrap of paper. Later, after dinner and dessert and a lot of laughs, it was time to leave, but not quite yet. Still at the dinner table, I told Barack that I wanted to speak to him not as a political tactician, given my limited experience, but as a friend and a citizen about what I wanted to see in a presidential candidate.

“First,” I said, checking my scrap of paper, “run like you’re willing to lose.” I challenged him to say exactly what he thought and believed, because people can read a fake every time and because nothing persuades like conviction. Never mind that some would disagree. Our politics should not require us to agree on everything before we can work together on anything

“Second, run at the grassroots,” I said. I was certain that most people resent having self-proclaimed experts tell them what the outcome of the election will be even before they vote. But I also felt, I said, that grassroots campaigning is not simply a political tactic but a philosophy about community. When it comes to politics and civic life, I said, so many feel as if they’re on the outside looking in. His opportunity was to go to those who feel left out and invite them in.

Last, I told Obama about the importance of keeping his rhetoric positive and high-minded, that it not only set him apart from other candidates but expressed the
kind of visionary leadership the country needed. I warned him of the obvious: Detractors will dismiss what you say as empty rhetoric just because it’s inspirational. I shared with him the riff I had developed in my own campaign—“just words”—and invited him to use it if he ever found it helpful. (He did later in the campaign, which produced a minor uproar in the media.)

He listened intently and seriously, with that professorial air he sometimes has. He asked few questions and mostly just nodded. He thanked me warmly. As I started to put my notes away, he took the scrap of paper from me and put it in his own pocket.

As Obama’s candidacy came to be taken more seriously, idealism itself was on trial. “Change you can believe in”—one of his most recognized campaign slogans—was an antidote to the naked fear-mongering of his Republican opponents, but his positive message stood out in the Democratic primary as well. During one debate in New Hampshire, Clinton chided Obama for raising what she called “false hopes.” This was, for me, one of the saddest moments of the campaign. Why exactly were his hopes false? What made his aspirations inauthentic? Indeed, if they were, we were all wrong about our country’s most deeply held values.

Obama, of course, won the Democratic nomination, and just about one year after our quiet dinner on the
Vineyard, I was one of eighty-four thousand people to witness his acceptance speech at Invesco Field in Denver. This vast, modern stadium, built for touchdown passes and bone-crunching sacks, now featured a red, white, and blue stage on the field, adorned with Roman columns puncturing the expanse. The high Colorado sky and warm temperatures made sunglasses and water bottles necessities.

I was both a delegate and a campaign surrogate, so I was asked to arrive well before the evening’s formalities began to be available for the press. The national anthem, which officially launched the program, was about to be sung when Jim Braude, from New England Cable News, asked to interview me. Jim was a familiar reporter and I asked him to wait so I could stand, my hand over my heart, and listen to Jennifer Hudson sing. Radiant in a dark short-sleeved dress, she walked onto the blue-carpeted stage, surrounded by the color guard with their rifles and the flags whipping in the breeze. Then she sang with such power and emotion, holding every note like it was her last, while the half-f stadium watched and listened in silence.

I have sung “The Star-Spangled Banner” many times and have heard it many more. At official state events. Before ball games. On television in the quiet of my living room. But now there was a poignancy to the words different from what I had felt before. I knew all about the rockets’ red glare and the bombs bursting in air. But there was something new when she sang, “O say, does that
star-spangled banner yet wave …” She was singing about enduring American ideals.

The flag symbolized a special kind of triumph that day. If only for a moment, some great divide in our country’s history closed. Not a racial divide or an economic divide but a human divide. For an instant we reconciled. When she finished singing, I stood back, shut my eyes, and sobbed. All the anguish, all the exasperation, all the frustrated hopes of a generation poured out of me.

Braude was gracious. He left me alone until I gathered myself and was ready to be interviewed. As I walked over to him, I bumped into Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, and one of the nation’s rising black political stars. I asked him how he was doing.

“I’m not going to make it,” he said.

“Why?”

“I just fell apart listening to the national anthem.”

And both of us burst into tears all over again. By the time I reached Braude, I was laughing and crying at the same time.

Jim’s first question of the interview was: “Why are you crying?”

Why indeed.

Later, when Obama took the stage to deliver his acceptance speech, I sat at the back of the Massachusetts delegation and tried to avoid talking to anyone. I just wanted to listen, see, and absorb. Young people, clearly volunteers,
were at once stunned and emboldened to realize that they could shape history. Old people, especially elderly blacks, randomly shook their heads, looked off into the distance, or smiled softly. Everyone was transfixed. By the time Obama took the stage, every seat was full—and the roar filled the night sky. The first thing I noticed was the expression on his face: the gravitas, the humility, the realization that this wasn’t just a political rally in a Colorado football stadium but a turning point in American history.

We talk about these idealistic American values—freedom, equality, reconciliation—but more often than not they’re the stuff we reserve for public holidays or special occasions. After the parades and holiday tributes, we put them back on the shelf and return to the banalities of everyday life. And then this young, charismatic man comes along and invites us to believe in them, and he is a
black
man—someone from a despised quarter of the society—who makes the election not about race but about those very values. After the speech, reporters kept sticking microphones in my face and asking if I felt a new sense of pride because a black man was accepting the Democratic nomination to be president of the United States. That was part of it, no doubt. I felt great pride. But it was the
message
—the tangible hope, the bold idealism—that was the transcendent part for me. That renewal of faith in the possible was what made everything different.

I got a message from an aide that Obama wanted to
see me right after the program. I obliged, but I really didn’t want to go. I just wanted to try to take it in, to imprint on my memory the good and wise and proud thing that the people of America had just done and were about to do in November. But I dutifully went backstage after the lights went down and greeted the Obamas as well as Joe and Jill Biden and their families as they came off the stage. I hardly said a word.

Barack had one question: “Was it all right?”

I just nodded.

Obama’s landslide election in November confirmed that his message had been heard across the country and that he had lit a spark of idealism for a new generation of Americans. I was elated not only because I felt he would change the direction of the country, but because his victory offered a new template for appealing to voters’ better angels.

But I’m not naive. When the tides of cynicism run so deep, change will come slowly. I understand why so many people in our society, young and old, have lost trust in many of our society’s core institutions and in the men and women who lead them. The headlines are a drumbeat of betrayal: the greed of Wall Street, the half-truths and outright lies of politicians, the steroid use among professional athletes, the shrill tone of talk radio and cable TV, the
tawdry sex scandals too numerous to mention. At some level we have come to expect disappointment and bad examples from prominent people and public institutions.

But defeatism is precisely the wrong message. We need to remind ourselves that, individually and collectively, we can do better. I know that’s true, because I see that American ideals are more powerful than any one American who might undermine them. Those ideals were undeniable one summer day in 2008, when I attended the funeral of a soldier.

When I first became governor, I was reluctant to attend the funerals of servicemen and servicewomen from Massachusetts. I certainly wanted to acknowledge their sacrifice and to offer whatever comfort I could to the families, but I worried that my presence would be misinterpreted as grandstanding. My staff urged me to attend, and I’m glad they did. I’ve tried to be at each one. Though I’ve been asked to speak, I never do. I listen, I pray, I pay my respects. I simply want the family and loved ones to know that the citizens of Massachusetts recognize and honor the sacrifice that was made for the rest of us—indeed, for American ideals.

What is most striking about these funerals is how young everyone is—the surviving spouse, the boyfriend or girlfriend, the siblings, the friends and classmates. In some cases, the widow cradles an infant son or daughter the dead soldier has never held. Some who gave their lives were immigrants, which is not surprising. About 12 percent of
those who serve in the U.S. military are not citizens. Yet they too enlist, serve, and sometimes die in action.

Nelson D. Rodriquez Ramirez was born in Puerto Rico; his family moved to Boston when he was eight and later settled in Revere. Nelson dropped out of high school, moved to New York when he was eighteen, and enlisted in the New York Army National Guard. In June of 2008, he was on his second tour of duty in Afghanistan, on a training mission in Kandahar City with the Second Squadron, 101st Cavalry, when his truck hit an improvised explosive device. Four servicemen were killed, including Ramirez. He was twenty-two.

I attended the funeral at Immaculate Conception Church in Revere, which has served its community since 1888. The church reminded me of many others I have been in—the stained-glass windows, the tower bell, the statue of the Blessed Mother. The mourners’ heartbreak was also familiar to anyone who has suffered so deep a tragedy. Ramirez’s wife was there, emptied out with grieving, holding firm to their two daughters, one of whom was not yet six months old. The flag-draped casket lay before the altar, attended by an army honor guard. Many of the mourners held American flags. Others wore T-shirts that bore a picture of Nelson in his uniform with an American flag in the background. The image was inscribed with a Spanish phrase, which translates to: “You will live forever in our hearts.”

Ramirez’s mother, Diana, approached the altar near
the end of the service. “I’m going to say good-bye to my son,” she said, and spoke about “Bebo,” who loved Six Flags, the Yankees, airplanes, and his precious young daughters.

It was a moving if mostly conventional Catholic funeral mass, but the priest conducted it almost entirely in Spanish. His choice was fitting. The service was for the community, the pews filled with working-class men and women, many wearing jeans or T-shirts. Some were undocumented. Their language was Spanish—some probably spoke no English at all—but this way they could share in the sacrament. It occurred to me that there was no contradiction between their embrace of the Spanish language and their love for America.

When the priest completed the service, he sprinkled the casket with holy water, the end of the mass. Before the recessional, Diana stood and started singing “God Bless America.” Soon everyone joined in, more often than not in broken English: no music, just heavily accented words sung from the heart.

Though it was an unspeakably sad occasion, the spontaneous display of patriotism was inspiring. Undocumented in some cases, Spanish-speaking, and working class, surely the bereaved knew how many Americans viewed them—as outsiders, scapegoats, un-American. Yet they betrayed no bitterness and literally embraced the flag, and all that it represents, because they believe in it. They work the jobs that no one wants, they educate their children despite
inadequate resources, and they strive for a better life for themselves and their families. Each day they live for American ideals. And on rugged terrain in dangerous, distant lands, they die for them as well.

I’ve simply seen too much goodness in this country—and have come so far in my own journey—not to believe in those ideals, and my faith in them is sometimes restored under the darkest clouds. I remember one visit to the Holland School in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston. Dorchester is a bit like the South Side of Chicago of my youth: handsome Victorian homes owned by professionals surrounded by double- and triple-decker flats occupied by the working poor and barely middle class. Today, Dorchester is populated mostly by African Americans and immigrants from the West Indies, the Dominican Republic, and Cape Verde. Living there as well are many Irish holdouts from a generation ago. Small shops sell “ethnic food” (as distinct from how the French cafés and Irish pubs downtown are described), and people get around on the bus and the subway more often than by car. Most of the people work hard and strive to better themselves, but the news is almost always about the gangs and the guns, and my visits there are as often to commiserate as to celebrate.