Earlier in the week I'd refused invitations to parties planned by optimistic friends because I was afraid of reacting like this -- I just knew I wouldn't be fit for human company. Plus, I'm a Democrat, and deep pessimism is encoded in our political DNA. Never mind that the polls were showing our guy 10 points ahead --it was still possible he would lose. We've known heartbreak before -- remember Gore? Kerry? I didn't want to be with anyone else on that metaphorical ledge if he lost.
Sure, we had done everything that was humanly possible to get Barack Obama over that finish line. In September, I helped organize a literary fundraiser. A bunch of us worked our hopeful little hearts out. Overnight, we (financial analysts, lawyers, executives, artists, students) became what Republicans love to hate --community organizers.
I called writer friends who called writer friends. We managed to get Salman Rushdie, Jhumpa Lahiri, Kiran Desai, Suketu Mehta, Akhil Sharma and Manil Suri under one roof. Mira Nair, the filmmaker, flamboyant and charming as always, emceed. Six hundred and fifty people showed up, shelled out, and participated in a party that was part New York glam-fest, part Obama love-in. In the end we made $56,090 dollars for Obama's Campaign for Change --not a small feat, considering New Yorkers, like the rest of the country, are in deep economic doo-doo.
In the weeks that followed, panicky and unable to relax, I phone-banked at all hours for the campaign, calling Americans with strange accents in Indiana and Virginia and asking them to volunteer or please, please, show up at the polls! Fortunately for my sanity, and that of vast swathes of the country, we managed to pull it off.
Since the emotional rollercoaster that was election night, I've been thinking about why this election seems so life-changing and important to me. Why did Barack Obama's campaign make me almost ill with nervous energy, fear and hope?
I think (and this is still in formulation) that it's because ever since I came here in 1997, I've admired America for the loftiness of its ideas. This is a country that is predicated on an idea of total equality, on the pursuit of happiness not for some, but for all. This seemed to me an admirable ideal and, however corny that sounds, noble.
Still, I saw evidence every day that all of us were not equal, that many were left behind and worse, that many Americans clearly thought the rest of the world was inferior. Despite this, I still maintained that it was amazing that a country would hold fast to these principles, that an ordinary man of modest means could fight in court to assert that he was as equal as that guy in his Lamborghini. And often win.
Then there's my personal experience. I arrived in this country a nobody, simply wanting to write. In the intervening years, I was recognized, published, and elevated to some modest recognition. Many generous and patient people encouraged and mentored me, without regard to where I was from, the color of my skin or my gender. Yes, I know Americans take all this for granted, in fact we demand it here --but stop and think about all of the implications of this freedom to be oneself, to be defined by nothing else but talent and effort.
Then the last eight years happened. I was reminded every day how venal, selfish, small-minded and sinfully stupid some of my countrymen can be. I had to live with the fact that I was bringing up my child in a country that was dismantling its most cherished tenets at a terrifying pace.
I wore my citizenship like a hairshirt. It was like I was in love with someone who beat me, then the next morning said or did something that set me hoping again, only to punch me in the stomach that night. It tired me out, all this despair and hate.
Barack Obama promised change, and in the beginning it was easy to be skeptical. What does change look like? What does it smell like? He explained it as unity. As a way of being one country, rather than pockets of separateness. Like all good ideas, it seemed simple and attainable.
Unity to me also presumed equality. Only if I thought that I was as good as my neighbor would I join in common cause with her. I saw this principle in action every day--at least in Queens, New York where I live. I see all these people of different cultures, religions and philosophies still striving along happily in the same kind of belief that I have in America. He wasn't saying anything that wasn't already being practiced.
And Obama's very presence on the national stage implied equality. Like all of us, he came from nowhere special. This black guy with a single mom grew up in a small two-bedroom apartment in Hawaii, and used his smarts and his discipline to Harvard and from there to the presidency. He was an embodiment of what America had been promising the rest of us.
Other people had done similar things, but no one in my time had articulated their struggles and their ideas so well.
And this is where we come to the other part of it, the obsession part, if you want to call it that. I confess it is the eloquence that got me going. Obama is someone who uses language to persuasive effect--who communicates large, complex ideas with enviable ease, beauty and respect for our intelligence. All one had to do was read his book, Dreams From My Father, or listen to his landmark speech on race, to be convinced of his talents as a wordsmith.
Beyond standing up for all the standard liberal percepts I believe in, there was the fact that this man knew and respected language. After eight years of a president who didn't read, here was the chance to elect --O happy day! -- a writer. Someone who understood the power of words, and saw the importance of structure, design, the well-chosen verb and noun, knew how to make sentences sing. A thinker, for god's sake! As one columnist said recently, here was someone we haven't seen in some time --a proud, out of the closet, let's say it out loud, intellectual!
So there you have it. I worked 10 hours a day for a month for someone who has never heard of me, hoped and prayed and fought and cried and read blogs and followed every tremor in the polls and made frantic phone calls to Indiana and Virginia-- all because I wanted a writer-president.
Late on the night of November 4, Barack stood on stage with Michelle and the kids, looked straight at me (okay, and a few others) and said: 'Thank you. This victory belongs to you.' I nodded back, proud as all heck.
Mira Nair is the author of Video. Four years ago, she lamented Democrat John Kerry's loss.
