Posted by
Boomer911 on Monday, June 09, 2008 1:20:19 PM
In January of 2007, my brother and I were traveling home and sitting at a traffic light on Jackson and Loomis in the great city of Chicago. As we were sitting there discussing the days events, I happened to be looking over at one of the local businesses, a camera shop, when the door swung open and a tall, lean, and lanky man walked out of the shop and began fumbling with something in his hand. I immediately recognized the man before me as one Barack Obama, our democratic senator who was more well known for a political speech in 2004 than anything else. I alerted my brother to whose presence we were lucky enough to embrace and said, "Hey there's Barack Obama!" I rolled the window down and yelled to the senator from the Soviet satellite state of Illinois, "Hey, Barack!" The senator raised his head and for a brief moment forgot about his task, as he raised his hand to wave to us and shout "What's up?" The senator continued on and began fumbling again with whatever it was he had in his hand, the light turned green, and we continued on our way home.
We sat in silence for a moment when finally I said, "Its hard to believe but we may have just seen the future President of the United States." See, I knew the democratic party was grooming this well spoken black man for a future shot at the presidency. But what I didn't know then was that it would be so soon. I had heard the speech he gave at the democratic (socialist) national convention as the key note speaker and knew how prestigious an honor it was to be able to address a national audience. But not in my wildest dreams did I think the young and inexperienced senator from Illinois was going to join the next fight for the highest office in the land.
There are many times when I see Obama on the television or hear a clip on the radio and I am reminded of our brief encounter. There was no security or secret service around him, no screaming mobs of fans swooning at every blink of his eye, no one fighting to touch him or take his picture, no fainting women, no one...............no one. See, the senator didn't need the security then because he was largely unknown to the common man who doesn't pay too much attention to the political world. But only a year and a half later, he is one of two men who stand before the doorway to history and will only get to enter the doorway if the American people welcome him in this November 4th.
How could it be that a man who was relatively an unknown a year and a half ago, a man who has some questionable relationships with racist preachers, a man who has said he would end the war in Iraq regardless of what the generals have to say, a man who has a questionable voting history in the U.S. Senate when he was there, and a whole host of other questions, be on the brink of capturing the Presidency of the United States? And whats more frustrating is that we are chastised by liberals and Obama's supporters for trying to find out a little more about a man who came out of political obscurity to be the front runner for the office. The fact is we need to find out as much about Obama as we can. He doesn't have the long career in politics that John McCain has had so there is very little to go off. I think if the American people dig a little deeper to see what Barack Obama stands for, they will run from him like a collapsing, burning building. We just need to dig.