I worked in the Senate with Mercy, a tall, pretty senior from UMass who lived for movie stars. The interns had a game inspired by Kevin Bacon’s six degrees of separation in which we’d name an actor and a movie as dissimilar as possible (try James Dean and National Treasure) and Mercy would have to connect them from memory. After two weeks of the game, it was Mercy: 46, interns: 0.
The afternoon Mercy ran into Barack Obama in the hallway outside our office is still fresh in my mind. That afternoon, Mercy returned to the intern cubicle with her face lit up. “Guess who I just talked to as he waited for an elevator?” she gushed.
The story was just as I would have predicted. Mercy was walking back to our office when she saw Obama standing with a group of people at the elevators. She bravely approached him, blurted out her admiration, and quiveringly shook his hand. It was, the interns agreed, classic Mercy behavior.
At this point in her retelling, Mercy’s face suddenly fell and she looked at us with embarrassment.
As Mercy had prattled on to Obama as if he were one of her movie star obsessions, she said, a real movie star, George Clooney, someone Mercy had dreamed about meeting (as she confessed to me multiple times), was standing right next to them. The only glimpse Mercy got was a sliver of his enchanting face as the elevator doors slid shut. She couldn’t believe that she had missed “the opportunity of her lifetime.” Mercy: 46, interns: 1.
No other Senator, and for that matter no other potential 2008 candidate, could have drawn Mercy’s gaze right past George Clooney.
With the field of presidential candidates just beginning to solidify, it’s difficult for me to feel excited about any of the other choices. Hillary? Too cold and calculating and far too predictable a candidate. McCain? His courtship with the far right taints an already undesirable platform. Tom Vilsack? Who?
As other candidates are talking to their staffers about talking to their spouses about considering forming an exploratory committee, Obama sparked fervent speculation about his potential candidacy with a mere “maybe” along with a carefully planned book tour. From Oct. 19 to Oct. 23, he was the subject of four separate columns in The New York Times.
All four columnists sang the typical praise for Obama’s unique life story and political promise. But while Maureen Dowd was content to discuss Obama’s appearences on Oprah and in Men’s Vogue, Frank Rich offered a very legitimate concern. “The sum of all his terrific parts, this theory goes, may be less than the whole: another Democrat who won’t tell you what day it is before calling a consultant,” he wrote. Bob Herbert pointed out that the Republicans are rooting for Obama to win the nomination too. “They would like nothing more than for the Democrats to nominate a candidate in 2008 who has a very slender résumé, very little experience in national politics, hardly any in foreign policy—and who also happens to be black,” he wrote. Herbert might have a point—David Brooks, one of the Times’ two token conservative, wrote a column “Run, Barack, Run!” four days before.
For every reason that Obama should be president, there are two why he shouldn’t. For now, though, let’s set aside the debate about Obama’s lack of experience, his eagerness to please everyone and America’s willingness to elect a black president and just be glad that Obama’s candidacy is something entertaining to look forward to in the two-year marathon campaign cycle. We’re months away from the primaries and I’m content to just admire Obama’s oratory skill, unbreakable poise, and seemingly endless potential. Mercy: 46, interns: 1, Obama: 2008.
