Барак Обама - The Audacity of Hope

By these standards at least, it sometimes appears that Americans today value nothing so much as being rich, thin, young, famous, safe, and entertained. We say we value the legacy we leave the next generation and then saddle that generation with mountains of debt. We say we believe in equal opportunity but then stand idle while millions of American children languish in poverty. We insist that we value family, but then structure our economy and organize our lives so as to ensure that our families get less and less of our time.

And yet a part of us knows better. We hang on to our values, even if they seem at times tarnished and worn; even if, as a nation and in our own lives, we have betrayed them more often than we care to remember. What else is there to guide us? Those values are our inheritance, what makes us who we are as a people. And although we recognize that they are subject to challenge, can be poked and prodded and debunked and turned inside out by intellectuals and cultural critics, they have proven to be both surprisingly durable and surprisingly constant across classes, and races, and faiths, and generations. We can make claims on their behalf, so long as we understand that our values must be tested against fact and experience, so long as we recall that they demand deeds and not just words.

To do otherwise would be to relinquish our best selves.

T HERE’S A SAYING that senators frequently use when asked to describe their first year on Capitol Hill: “It’s like drinking from a fire hose.”

The description is apt, for during my first few months in the Senate everything seemed to come at me at once. I had to hire staff and set up offices in Washington and Illinois. I had to negotiate committee assignments and get up to speed on the issues pending before the committees. There was the backlog of ten thousand constituent letters that had accumulated since Election Day, and the three hundred speaking invitations that were arriving every week. In half-hour blocks, I was shuttled from the Senate floor to committee rooms to hotel lobbies to radio stations, entirely dependent on an assortment of recently hired staffers in their twenties and thirties to keep me on schedule, hand me the right briefing book, remind me whom I was meeting with, or steer me to the nearest restroom.

Then, at night, there was the adjustment of living alone. Michelle and I had decided to keep the family in Chicago, in part because we liked the idea of raising the girls outside the hothouse environment of Washington, but also because the arrangement gave Michelle a circle of support — from her mother, brother, other family, and friends — that could help her manage the prolonged absences my job would require. So for the three nights a week that I spent in Washington, I rented a small one-bedroom apartment near Georgetown Law School, in a high-rise between Capitol Hill and downtown.

At first, I tried to embrace my newfound solitude, forcing myself to remember the pleasures of bachelorhood — gathering take-out menus from every restaurant in the neighborhood, watching basketball or reading late into the night, hitting the gym for a midnight workout, leaving dishes in the sink and not making my bed. But it was no use; after thirteen years of marriage, I found myself to be fully domesticated, soft and helpless. My first morning in Washington, I realized I’d forgotten to buy a shower curtain and had to scrunch up against the shower wall in order to avoid flooding the bathroom floor. The next night, watching the game and having a beer, I fell asleep at halftime, and woke up on the couch two hours later with a bad crick in my neck. Take-out food didn’t taste so good anymore; the silence irked me. I found myself calling home repeatedly, just to listen to my daughters’ voices, aching for the warmth of their hugs and the sweet smell of their skin.

“Hey, sweetie!”

“Hey, Daddy.”

“What’s happening?”

“Since you called before?”

“Yeah.”

“Nothing. You wanna talk to Mommy?”

There were a handful of senators who also had young families, and whenever we met we would compare notes on the pros and cons of moving to Washington, as well as the difficulty in protecting family time from overzealous staff. But most of my new colleagues were considerably older — the average age was sixty — and so as I made the rounds to their offices, their advice usually related to the business of the Senate. They explained to me the advantages of various committee assignments and the temperaments of various committee chairmen. They offered suggestions on how to organize staff, whom to talk to for extra office space, and how to manage constituent requests. Most of the advice I found useful; occasionally it was contradictory. But among Democrats at least, my meetings would end with one consistent recommendation: As soon as possible, they said, I should schedule a meeting with Senator Byrd — not only as a matter of senatorial courtesy, but also because Senator Byrd’s senior position on the Appropriations Committee and general stature in the Senate gave him considerable clout.

At eighty-seven years old, Senator Robert C. Byrd was not simply the dean of the Senate; he had come to be seen as the very embodiment of the Senate, a living, breathing fragment of history. Raised by his aunt and uncle in the hardscrabble coal-mining towns of West Virginia, he possessed a native talent that allowed him to recite long passages of poetry from memory and play the fiddle with impressive skill. Unable to afford college tuition, he worked as a meat cutter, a produce salesman, and a welder on battleships during World War II. When he returned to West Virginia after the war, he won a seat in the state legislature, and he was elected to Congress in 1952.

In 1958, he made the jump to the Senate, and during the course of forty-seven years he had held just about every office available — including six years as majority leader and six years as minority leader. All the while he maintained the populist impulse that led him to focus on delivering tangible benefits to the men and women back home: black lung benefits and union protections for miners; roads and buildings and electrification projects for desperately poor communities. In ten years of night courses while serving in Congress he had earned his law degree, and his grasp of Senate rules was legendary. Eventually, he had written a four-volume history of the Senate that reflected not just scholarship and discipline but also an unsurpassed love of the institution that had shaped his life’s work. Indeed, it was said that Senator Byrd’s passion for the Senate was exceeded only by the tenderness he felt toward his ailing wife of sixty-eight years (who has since passed away) — and perhaps by his reverence for the Constitution, a pocket-sized copy of which he carried with him wherever he went and often pulled out to wave in the midst of debate.

I had already left a message with Senator Byrd’s office requesting a meeting when I first had an opportunity to see him in person. It was the day of our swearing in, and we had been in the Old Senate Chamber, a dark, ornate place dominated by a large, gargoyle-like eagle that stretched out over the presiding officer’s chair from an awning of dark, bloodred velvet. The somber setting matched the occasion, as the Democratic Caucus was meeting to organize itself after the difficult election and the loss of its leader. After the new leadership team was installed, Minority Leader Harry Reid asked Senator Byrd if he would say a few words. Slowly, the senior senator rose from his seat, a slender man with a still-thick snowy mane, watery blue eyes, and a sharp, prominent nose. For a moment he stood in silence, steadying himself with his cane, his head turned upward, eyes fixed on the ceiling. Then he began to speak, in somber, measured tones, a hint of the Appalachians like a knotty grain of wood beneath polished veneer.