rock out with my Barack out

I've always been involved in politics. I remember seeing Johnson in 64 from my mom's arms--I was three. At ten, I worked fund-raisers wearing purple crushed velvet shorts and a banner that said "Welsh-aide" and handed out pamphlets for the man who was running for Governor of Indiana. In 1976, at 15, I waited for hours beside a barricade so I could shake Jimmy Carter's hand--a moment that remains one of the highlights of my life. I have petitioned and rallied and worked the polls for people I admire. I have marched and carried protest signs, calling to task those I didn't. My granddad, my dad, and my mom have all held public office. Politics, for me, is grafted on at bone level. And this is far too much lead in for the smidgeon-sized thing I have to say today, but it's to give you a gist of who and why I am.

For the first time in my lifetime, the Indiana Presidential primary actually matters. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you've heard it on the news, but if you're from a state that has consistently had input into who runs for President for your party, it might be hard to realize what a big stinkin' deal this is. I've voted in every primary, but with quite a bit of apathy, because everything has always been a done deal. What sense of investment in the process is there in that? But this year is different. This year I count.

My Presidential vote, on the other hand, has never counted, maybe never will count. The last time Indiana went Democratic in a Presidential election was for Johnson in that 1964 race. Maybe they were just too hurt and stunned to remember they were Republicans after November, 1963. Indiana didn't even go for Kennedy in '60. I was looking through history, to see what had happened before my time, and saw that Indiana did go for Roosevelt, but only a couple of his terms, and well, there was a major groundswell there that perhaps no one wanted to be left out of. Roosevelt got something like 99 percent of the popular vote. (I'm making that number up, but it was WWII, and it was a groundswell.) Then Indiana got back on it's conservative track and voted for Thomas Dewey twice. Suffice it to say, no delegate has ever carried my precious vote to the final tally-uppers.

But this year, in this primary at least, my vote counts. And tonight, I am going to hear Obama speak. I'm beside myself with excitment. And here is where my Buddhist leanings touch my political fervor--this sense of optimism growing in my heart like a bean vine. There have been politicians I can admire (on both sides of the equation), but only a few at this level have called up in me, so strongly, the eightfold path principles of Right Speech and Right Action. Jimmy Carter was one of these people--I was so inspired by him in the 70's and feel that time has proved that he was who he said he was, that he has followed his "right speech" with "right action" and the world is a better place because of him. I knew, from a deep place, that he was telling me the truth, that he meant what he said. I feel that way again and I am buoyed up in these troubled times.

I like this quote: "The importance of speech in the context of Buddhist ethics is obvious: words can break or save lives, make enemies or friends, start war or create peace." I know they are just words, and words from someone who is making a major grab for political power, words that should always be considered suspect, but something in me says differently. I am going tonight to hear the man for myself. I *sense* right speech, and I *pray* for right action.