Let us unite as Americans

By Don Richeson
Eagle Editor
The View From Old Rag
Published: November 12, 2008

I’ve always liked it when a new president is elected.

Presidential inauguration time is a moment of joy and hope.

The first that I recall clearly is Jimmy Carter’s.

My social studies teacher at the Florida public high school I attended wasn’t the most motivated educator around. There was a big old back-and-white TV mounted high up on the wall in the front of the classroom and if he didn’t feel like talking very much on a certain day, he’d just turn it to the “Phil Donahue Show” and let the class watch it while he did crossword puzzles or what-not.

But I remember one day in January 1977 there was actually some programming appropriate to the class – the network had cut in live to show the inaugural address. Immediately afterward, President Carter, his wife, Rosalind, and their daughter, Amy, had unexpectedly ditched the presidential limousine. Instead, they were walking the mile and a half down Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol to their new home – the White House. It was a time of newness and optimism, coming as it did with the specter of the Watergate scandal having weighed so mightily upon the country for the preceding few years.

It was perhaps not so much that the nation was so enthralled with Carter as it was that he was so different than Richard Nixon. Gerald Ford of course was also unlike Nixon, but many still connected the two, since Ford had been Nixon’s vice president and had pardoned him.

Great. We had a new, completely different president. The honeymoon was exciting, but short-lived. In less than a year, banker Bert Lance, a key figure in the Carter administration, would become embroiled in a scandal and be forced to resign. The public would decide that Carter’s administration could have scandals too, so maybe he wasn’t so un-Nixon-like as had been thought. It went downhill from there.

One time, late in his term, I saw Carter in person – well I saw his teeth anyway. Let me explain.

That summer I was living in Boston (the big one in Massachusetts, not the little one in Culpeper County) and Carter had come there to meet with then-Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill about some such weighty political matter or maybe do some campaigning in his re-election bid. And this time, Carter was in the limousine.

He and O’Neill sat solidly encased in the back of it as a motorcade traveled through the city’s streets. The route was announced beforehand and people lined the streets to watch.

As I observed from the sidewalk, I saw it pass close by, but its thick bullet-proof windows had heavy dark tinting. The only thing I could see in the back of it was Carter’s trademark huge grin gleaming all big and bright through the dark glass.

I began thinking of all this because it reminded me a little of the Obama phenomenon – the country being so weary of its current president that it is hungry to embrace someone so totally unlike him. I realize though the possible parallels do differ in significant ways. Barack Obama is so much more politically astute than Carter. And he has more of an FDR-like quality about him, one well suited to offer bright rays of hope through times filled with a devastated economy, multiple wars and other fairly ominous developments.

It will be interesting to watch as things unfold, to see if he can keep folks inspired and engaged as time wears on. Wisely, he has correctly cautioned us that there are some tremendous challenges ahead and that the things that need fixing will not all be fixed in weeks or months, or in some cases, even years.

Words from President-Elect Obama’s election night speech appear prominently elsewhere in this edition of The Eagle. But before I move on to look at some difficulties the election has caused locally, I’d like to share some reconciliatory words from John McCain’s election night speech, which, like Obama’s, was outstanding.

McCain said, “Senator Obama and I have had and argued our differences, and he has prevailed. No doubt many of those differences remain.

“These are difficult times for our country. And I pledge to him tonight to do all in my power to help him lead us through the many challenges we face.

“I urge all Americans ... I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together to find the necessary compromises to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited.”

***

Unfortunately, the messages of hope, reconciliation and national unity from both President-Elect Obama and John McCain have not reached all. Some forces of hate swirl in our county.

Sherry Spencer and her mother, Pat Roberts, who operate Pat’s Floral Designs on North Main Street, contacted The Eagle shortly before the election to show us some of the anonymous threatening letters that were mailed to them and some of their customers after they put up a large Obama sign near their store, which is sort of at a gateway area to the north side of downtown Madison.

One letter read, “…if your socialist candidate gets elected and hundreds of my friends and their families lose their jobs or get laid off because of your socialist views and ‘spread the wealth’ tax plan we will blame you!

“When we get attacked by terrorists, we will blame you! Your candidate is weak and doesn’t want a strong military. Our military has spread freedom in Iraq and you just ignore that!

“If you’re still in business after two years with an Obama presidency, we’ll all be amazed.

“We are encouraging everyone we know to boycott Pat’s (Floral Designs).”

Spencer also showed an anonymous letter one of her customers received calling the business “filthy, socialist, Marxist” and urging the customer to “send a message to that bunch of liberals” by taking their business elsewhere and that liberals were unwelcome in the county.

“It scared us,” said Spencer, who lives with her family on the store’s property. “It hurt us and we felt violated by it.”

Her mother, Pat Roberts, said the business is not at all partisan and has done a lot to support local Republicans in addition to Democrats, noting that she donated flower vases to a Madison GOP group to make its event more special. “I give equal support to both parties – a lot of my friends are Republicans,” she said.

Madison County Sheriff Erik Weaver said that his office is investigating the letters and that it may do some fingerprint processing of the letters to try and determine who sent them. He said he wasn’t immediately sure what charges the sender might face, but said, “We would like to find out who they are and discuss the issue with them to find out what their intention was.”

He said however that overall this election was quieter than many, in terms of things like stolen signs.

But at least two speakers at a Madison County Obama election celebration Saturday reported instances where their candidate’s supporters were pressured. The Rev. Frank Lewis, pastor of Antioch Baptist Church in Madison, said a Madison woman was fired from her job for supporting Obama. “You’d be surprised at what African-Americans are encountering,” he said.

Another speaker, Wolftown resident Jeff Green, said he noticed a family going to vote at the Wolftown precinct and bringing along their children, who wore jackets with large Confederate flag emblems sewn on the back. “Racism is alive and well in this county,” Green said.

The Rev. Lewis said that Obama’s election was still a joyous occasion, despite the incidents. “This may bring this out, get a dialog going,” he said. “I think in the long run it will make a positive difference that’s needed to be made in a long time.”

(Don Richeson is editor of The Madison County Eagle. Call him at [540] 948-5121, fax him at [540] 948-3045 or e-mail him at .)