A Big Day in Iowa

May 20 and my daughter turns 4.  I'm the father of a four year old girl.  Alia.  It feels like I've had her forever.  She's a child with the kind of spooky wisdom that leaves people shaking their heads and smiling.  

She sings to her baby sister to stop her crying.  "Don't cwyyy," she sings softly to the tune of The Who's Baba O'Reily.  She once brought tears to the eye's of her friend's mother when she did this at their house to comfort her little friend.  And now she's four.  

It's May 20 and Barack Obama comes back to Iowa.  

 

I first saw Barack in person on Earth Day last year.  My daughter and I stood under a giant spruce tree, its long lower branches creating a cool room inside, out of the sun that beat down on nearly 10,000 people.  Look at pictures of Obama speaking to that crowd and you see the tree standing to the right of Iowa's Old Capital building.

Alia was still two that day but she's known Bawack Obama ever since.  She knows that mom and dad want to help make him Pwesident.  She was excited one morning months later when I came downstairs.  She saw a picture of daddy on the front page of our paper next to a picture of Obama.  

That was the first time I got to shake his hand.  It was a night he was too tired from the trail to be campaigning but he was rallying a crowd on campus with the stump speech I had seen him inaugurate at the Jefferson Jackson Dinner a month before.  

There was still a hard month of campaigning to go before the caucus and it still took a leap of faith to believe he could win.  And the man was tired.  It was nasty outside.  Freezing rain and snow and everyone in the state, it seemed, had a cold.  

I felt far from my baby girls being out on a night like that and standing 15 feet from Barack as he struggled to maintain his edge I kept thinking of how far away he was from his girls.  How it stings when you're tired and you know you won't see them before you sleep.

When he came by shaking hands after the speech, that was what I was thinking about.  When I said, "Barack," he held onto my hand and leaned in to hear me.

"I've got two little girls too.  Thank you for being out here doing this."

He stood up straight and looked at me, still holding onto my hand.

"Oh man, I miss them."  

And oh man, did I believe him.  

"We're going to get you there," I said and I patted him on the shoulder.

"Thank you," he said right back in campaign with a smile and moving on down the line.  

For me, this is all about getting an intelligent and decent person elected President for the future of my girls and everyone they share their world with.  I believe Barack Obama is a good man, untwisted by the politics that have driven so many of us to cynicism.  

The talk these days of his incredible run somehow being a black eye to feminism or a result of misogyny absolutely breaks my heart.  I'm dying for my girls to come of age in a better world and in a better nation than the one we have lived in during the past decade.  War is misogyny. Ignorance, social stagnation and lack of opportunity lead to misogyny.  That's what we're fighting against.  

How could any of those who are now wallowing in bitter sentiment with Geraldine Ferraro believe for one minute that I would support ANYTHING that would close off the world for my little girls or my career minded wife?  

When I saw a rerun of Hillary Clinton on television dressed in angry red shouting "Shame" at Barack Obama, Alia was in the room with me. I found myself turning it off fast because I didn't want her to see it.  I know my daughter.  When she would ask me, "Why is Hillary Clinton so mad at Obama?"  What was I going to say?  

"She's not honey.  She's just pretending to be so that other people will get mad at him.  It's even likely that the color she's wearing was planned for effect."  

I was protecting her from an obscenity.  

I am so glad the nomination is over.  I am so happy Barack won.  We won.  

That's why today is a celebration in so many ways.  The worry about not being able to tell our daughters that a woman is President just doesn't mean a hill of beans next to the realities of this race.  In and of itself it would have been cool but they don't need that symbolism to succeed.  I'm not raising my daughters scared.  They're going to be raised to be honest and brave and to work hard for what they want, just like their mom.  

And President Barack Obama can be a dynamite role model for my little Iowa girls.  

Happy birthday Peanut!

Welcome back Barack.  Congratulations.  

Now, let's go change the world.