Guest Post: Waiting for Barack

I’ve never been good with crowds. Well, I suppose that’s not accurate; I’ve never known how to feel about crowds. I’m not really shy and I’m totally comfortable speaking in front of a theoretically infinite number of people. But there’s a point when a crowd gets so big that it dwarfs everything else; the point where you realize not only the power of the people in aggregate, but the futility of even small changes any one person can make.

Obama speaks at Boise State | Photo by Colleen Scovill

When I first heard Obama was coming to Boise, I didn’t believe it. When I told others, they didn’t believe me. Even when everyone knew and I heard it on Boise State radio, nobody seemed convinced. The idea of someone larger than life coming to our own smaller-than-desirable state is difficult to process, like hearing that your favorite band is playing the State Fair.

But Obama is more than a rock star or actor. He’s someone who matters. He could change my life. He already has. In working toward his election I’ve learned a lot about politics, met a lot of people, and felt connected to an idea larger than myself or Idaho in a tangible way. I, Kim Stiens, was going to be able to stop complaining about things and do something to make a difference. How wonderful that a politician can fill me with such efficacy.

The theme of the morning seemed to be waiting. We waited for 15 minutes before receiving basic instructions and being put on a team: Roger’s Team. We waited in line with the rest of Roger’s Team, waited for the event staff to put up metal detectors (which certainly didn’t bother me; the last thing I wanted was for my state, for my event, to be the one to cause his death).

We went upstairs and waited at a table. We had forms that everyone walking by had already filled out. Everyone seemed bored. But we weren’t! We would have waited all day to see him, to hear him, in person. We waited, fanning ourselves with our rally signs, heads craning to see over the heads of the throng. Would he be able to fill the arena? Would it overflow? Or were we destined for disappointment? Were we just like Ron Paul supporters, energized but hopeless?

As the crowd filled the seats, as orange plastic was replaced by t-shirts and “Change We Can Believe In” signs. My eyes blurred. Two people are nothing. A dozen people are a party. A hundred people are a crowd. But 15,000 people… they’re just a painting. I see them, but they don’t move, they don’t exist. They are a wall, a wall of aggregate power. And as Obama himself, that mythical figure, appeared from underneath the black drapery (I could see him if I squinted), I wondered if he felt as underwhelmed by the painting as I did. 15,000 people, and only two of us mattered to me. He was only one small man next to a big, big painting. What does that make me? A brush stroke?

The volunteers got to have a big picture taken with Barack after the rally. At least, we were going to. Eventually. We filled in section six (there were a lot of volunteers, enough that we all knew that even if we got the picture, we wouldn’t even get to shake his hand), with some of us sharing seats so we could all get into the picture, and waited. We’d all loved the speech, of course, and we talked of how inspired we all were. Obama came out again, from the same entrance as before, and stepped up onto a raised platform in front of our seats. I was in the third row; close enough to really see him. I knew he wasn’t, somehow, just on TV. The first impression I’d gotten that Obama was real, flesh and blood, and all I could think about was how small he looked.

Perhaps he was just dwarfed, like reality, by the painted wall of people. Maybe I’d just built him up in my mind over the months so he had become, in my mind, truly larger than life. I imagined a force so powerful that it would inevitably sweep us all into its midst, and we would live happily ever after as a nation at peace with itself. I was never so naïve as to imagine that Obama might remove the abortion conflict, or that we’d never go into a foolish war again. But seeing Obama for what he is, just some guy, made me realize for the first time in the campaign how very much can go so very wrong.

Perhaps he is lost in this painting, like all of us. Perhaps, with all his event organizers and secret service agents and political viability he has lost himself in this mess we here in America have the nerve to call a democracy. That could have been the inevitable flaw of John Edwards, that when the populist working for the people has so many gate-keepers that the people have never seen him before, he is lost. Obama may be the same. I wonder if he has lost himself, if we have lost him, to the big fake painting that is life. I wonder if he wonders if he has lost himself as he is rushed to rally after rally, talking to paintings, trying to feel concern for those people who must no longer seem real. I wonder and worry, but I am just a brush stroke, and I wonder if Obama is the only real thing left in this nation.