VivirLatino

I just read this, in my opinion, fabulous piece in the New Yorker on Obama by Junot Diaz. Here’s an excerpt:

All year I’ve been waiting for Obama to flex his narrative muscles, to tell the story of his presidency, of his Administration, to tell the story of where our country is going and why we should help deliver it there. A coherent, accessible, compelling story—one that is narrow enough to be held in our minds and hearts and that nevertheless is roomy enough for us, the audience, to weave our own predilections, dreams, fears, experiences into its fabric. It should necessarily be a story eight years in duration, a story that no matter what our personal politics are will excite us enough to go out and reëlect the teller just so we can be there for the story’s end. But from where I sit our President has not even told a bad story; he, in my opinion, has told no story at all. I heard him talk healthcare to death but while he was elaborating ideas his opponents were telling stories. Sure they were bad ones, full of distortions and outright lies, but at least they were talking to the American people in the correct idiom: that of narrative. The President gave us a raft of information about why healthcare would be a swell idea; the Republicans gave us death panels. Ideas are wonderful things, but unless they’re couched in a good story they can do nothing.

What Diaz wrote really resonated with me on a number of levels. Having been lucky enough to cover some of the events on Obama’s road to the presidency, even though I was never an Obama girl, I could feel the magic of the story he wove and it’s importance. Watching him accept the Democratic Party nomination in Denver, his election, and his inauguration made me tear up. I thought all of those moments amazingly beautiful for their story and my part in it and I don’t feel that anymore.

As Obama said in his SOTU address, he is not magic, and maybe that’s the role of a campaign, to lure us in so that we can work to help write the story ourselves. And I know many may people who are doing the work now and I consider myself among them in a small way. So should Obama be creating the story or should we through our actions?

Read Junot Diaz’s entire New Yorker piece here.