Part III: You Say , 'Tempuh', I say, 'Figure out How To Say Tempe'

October 19, 2007

After the t-shirt guys, the crowd was ready. Ready for Obama. Unfortunately, I did not realize that there are "opening acts."

Come on, woman who looks like my friend Thad's aunt Nell in a red church-lady suit. You claimed we had three great universities in our state, and then only named two! (Note to self and other potential candidates: do not talk about other universities than the one you are speaking at, especially at state schools with football teams. Duh.)

Then there was the MC-lady, whose name I am also not sure of. This listening and copious note-taking thingy is hard.

We also had Liz, the Undergraduate Student Body President, who said something that was supposed to be a cheer, but apparently no one really knew what she said, and still may not. When asked if we could repeat the cheer with her, we enthusiastically responded, "No," and then she said whatever it was again. But it was OK, because we still clapped for her. You go, girl!

After her was Ed Ableser, the State Representative for Arizona District 17. Finally, we were moving up in the power ladder! Ed talked about a lot of things, and then mentioned that we need a president for "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, not torture, wiretapping, and the pursuit of war."

Then there was another State Rep, David Schapira (I think, I had to Google the district and that was the closest name to what I thought he said). He said something about "truisms," at which point I spaced out a little and wondered if that meant they were actual truth, or related to "truthiness"(also here), or what. Then I was back, and the was on to talking about his kids, and how he will tell them after Barack Obama is elected, "I was honored to live in the time of Barack Obama." Wait, I thought elections are next year -- don't we still get a chance to vote! What's the deal here? Am I not a desired voter???

At that point, David had said that Barack was coming out. Yay! And then someone else came out, oops. Tomas Chavez, who was a veteran and had been in Iraq for two years. He said that the first year, he had been wholeheartedly in agreement with the war and being there. By the second year, he found it hard to return, but "did it for the guys who were over there, " and is now committed to bringing them home. Hmmmmm.

FINally, and I do mean finally, Barack Obama came out on stage! The man of the hour (add more time if you are a RAPID ENTRY PASS holder). The crowd cheered! The crowd was on their feet (which, most of us were already forced to stand anyway)!

Barack greeted the crowd. "Hellooo, Tempuh."

Wait, what? Oh my word. No, he did not.

Pet peeve alert! Not saying a locality's name correctly in front of a large crowd of people from that locality is sort of a glaring mistake. Almost as bad as talking about a rival state school from another town, see note above.

Fortunately, things went a little more smoothly after that point. Obama is definitely a charismatic communicator, and the speech held the crowd's attention pretty well. A major part of his platform, which I'd read about in other places, is that of unity and working across party lines. He made a major point of not just being against issues, but standing for something.

He talked about many issues -- Iraq, paying for college, Katrina, energy, healthcare, etc. The East Valley Tribune wrote a pretty good recap here, so I will spare you from re-hashing all of the details. One item I picked up on caught me, since it is something I have some pretty strong opinions about. He mentioned the death penalty, and that he had worked to make sure innocent people were not on death row. I noticed the subtle point he made -- not that he is against the death penalty, he just wants to make sure the innocent aren't killed wrongfully. That fascinates me -- it's not something I've researched yet with the other candidates, but I generally get the idea that a more liberal stance would be against the death penalty (which always confuses me that you can be in favor of individuals choosing to have abortions but against state & legislative bodies choosing to kill criminals -- am I the only one who thinks that doesn't totally make sense?).

Overall, it was a good speech, full of hopeful ideals. Much of it was not new to me, as I'd read a good amount of it online before I went. I did appreciate the idea of unity and bi-partisan politics -- whether that is ever going to be close to being a reality (or even an issue, depending on which party ends up controlling Congress next year) in a time where it may be directed at parties who don't really care about being united, thank you very much. It also makes sense why so many younger voters are supporting him --I think my generation is pretty sick of petty, divisive politics in general, and how Congress somehow isn't really getting much done besides throwing each other out of office, investigating mounds upon mounds of bad decisions that have been made by various agencies/offices, and driving the country further and further into debt. At least the idea of someone aware enough to at least try to do that is better than what we have at the moment, we think.

Obama also talked about a lot of things that could, done well, be pretty good -- providing health care to every American (at the level that Congress receives, no less); "closing the achievement gap" in education; bettering foreign diplomacy by meeting not just with friends, but enemies as well; changing energy standards; and making student grants and loans more available for college. Good things. What he didn't say was how any of these things would come into place (or how they would be paid for). Seriously, the focus health care has been in the works at least since Clinton, and obviously the SCHIP votes recently have shown us how much progress has yet to be made -- we can't resolve issues on a program already in place, much less realistically think any form of universal health care program is going to come in the next 4 years.

At any rate, I will keep watching to see what Obama does, along with the other candidates. At the moment, I still remain healthily undecided -- I have to say that he did resonate with me on some issues, but I am still remaining skeptical until some concrete action points come into discussion from the ideals and policies on which he and other candidates are running.

So, I guess this means I'm packing away my new t-shirt . . . for now.