A year later, hope lives on

As a Barack Obama supporter and lifelong Chicagoan, it pained me not to be in my hometown the night he won the election. I watched MSNBC online streaming coverage until 6 a.m. in Córdoba, Spain, where I was studying for my junior year of college. Elated at his victory, my American friends and I hugged, cried and popped open a bottle of champagne — but I felt left out of a crucial moment for my country and my city.

To make up for it, I went to his inauguration. The following is from an email I wrote to a Chicago friend after attending:

“I ended up going alone, but it didn’t really matter much; there was this great sense of brother-/sisterhood that day (and those following) in the capital. I think your experience in Chicago on election night probably gives you some idea of what I’m talking about. I was so excited just to be going that I wasn’t even phased by the 9 hours of bus travel the trip called for.

It’s hard to appreciate the historic nature of an event like that in the moment, even when you know how significant it is. That’s pretty much how I felt at the time: knowing it was something important, something that would be talked about as a turning point in our nation’s history and possibly the world’s (depending on certain decisions he has yet to make and their consequences, of course), but at the same time I was just watching it happen and taking it all in: the glimpse of the red-curtained door through which our next president would walk through; the women next to me crying; the guy who keeps taking pictures and getting in the way of my narrow line of sight; the little girl sitting on her mom’s shoulders who cheers excitedly along with everyone else; the endless sea of people around me rejoicing…

So pretty much as you might expect: one of those priceless, tell-your-grandchildren stories.”

You can catch a glimpse of that sea of people in this blog’s banner.

Today, I still have hope that Barack Obama will change our country for the better, and faith that, in time, most of the many promises he made will come to fruition. I’m not thrilled with every single thing he’s done so far, but I’m quite satisfied with a lot of what he has accomplished. In the past year, he rescued the country from falling into a second depression; improved historically bad relations with Cuba; promoted democracy around the world through diplomacy rather than military force; appointed the first Hispanic Supreme Court judge; created policies and programs that promote sustainable living and environmental conservation; and put health care reform in motion. Controversial though it was, the Nobel Peace Prize was a cheering sign of the international community’s renewed faith in the United States and the president.

At the risk of sounding like an idealistic optimist, I sincerely believe President Obama will attempt to fulfill the vast majority of promises he made during the campaign. I also know that a single man’s will (and a lot of charm) is not enough. But as the man himself said, “In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.”

To find out just how far we’ve come since the inauguration (and how far we have to go), PolitiFact has compiled a complete list of all the promises Obama made during the campaign, and keeps tallies on the status of all 503 of them.