A Moment of Transcendence

© Tracy Lee Carroll

I think it’s going to be okay.

When all is said and done, and the opposing campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton reach that moment where one campaign is presented with the need to transition into supporting the general election campaign of the other, I think it’s going to be okay.

I think I saw the moment tonight where, in spite of the hair likely being yanked out of a few professional skulls backstage, Hillary Clinton lifted herself above those who surround her, and showed that she has every right to be in the running for the presidency – even if that goal has ultimately slipped beyond her reach.

And I know I wasn’t the only one to witness that ascendance. In fact, she received the evening’s only standing ovation as that moment of naked humanity and genuine perspective announced itself on that stage in Austin, Texas, to the exhilaration of every grown-up in the room. In fact, the only ones seemingly oblivious to the power of that instance have been the professional media flacks getting paid the big bucks to translate it all for those of us – in our dulled eight-second sound bite mentality – who salivate in a Pavlovian swoon, longing desperately for their learned take of what we all were perfectly capable of seeing for ourselves.

What happened, for anyone that didn’t see it, and won’t see it replayed on their TV or their YouTube video feed over the next news cycle or so, was that Hillary Clinton made it crystal clear that she knows that she just might lose this contest, and that it won’t be the end of the world for her if she does.

Of everything that I’ve ever heard her say, going all the way back to the early days of Bill’s run for the White House in 1992, this string of related sentences – spoken at the end of last night’s Texas debate – were her most impressive. It proved to me that there is something far greater to be gained in an honorable defeat than in a bitter victory, and it showed me that there are aspects of these competing campaign to change the direction of our national trajectory that drive them in ways that we’ve not seen before. Aspects that are far larger than anyone in either campaign, and certainly larger than anyone standing in the way of that change.

You see, it wasn’t the fact of her subtle indication that her life would go one in spite of a loss to Obama. It was that she declared that the winning of the primary was secondary to the accomplishment of this wholesale trajectory change that we so desperately need, and that we, the American public, must be the ultimate winner.

And I honestly believed her when she said it. I mean, I could literally feel that she meant it when she said it. And so could everyone, unaffected by the childish instigators of the corporate media, that heard her say it.

It may sound naive, but I can still feel it – and it feels pretty good.

There will still be a pack of media loads blathering on about horse races, and Super Delegates, and the Ohio/Texas firewall, and who won what debate as opposed to who exceeded the lowered expectations of whatever the hell was being expected during that two hour performance. And we’ll sit there and watch corporate funded political hatchets being tossed back and forth between every cluster of pup tents that have been set up to litter the professional landscape that we’ve been taught to believe is the world of public service, and we’ll get sucked back into it all as if it’s about our own ability to win against those who’ve lined up vicariously against us, and not about how best to spend the next four years of our collective future as a nation.

Her moment of grace and dignity won’t change how we do the nation’s business, and it won’t change how we approach the responsibility of selecting our political leaders. We’ll still drag our fears, hurts, hatreds, and humiliations around with us as we make our individual and collective cases for the prom kings and queens in this high school of hard knocks. We’ll still allow the worst and weakest parts of ourselves to make the loudest noise when we open our mouths to express what it is that drives us to commitment for one or the other of the presented choices.

We’ll still be who we are when all of this recedes into the miles that lay behind us.

What I hope is that Hillary Clinton will be transformed, as a human being, following that moment of personal transfiguration at the end of last night’s debate.

When John Kennedy died in Dealy Plaza, his brother Bobby, the brittle and petty pitbull of Camelot, retired to reflect on what it all meant for him and his own life going forward. The man who emerged from that quiet could have led this nation to its greatest moment ever, and inspired decades of national and international luminescence through the example that he was capable of as a man transformed by the agony he’d been blessed with. Ted Kennedy, embarrassingly denied “his turn” at the presidency, took that humiliation, put it behind him, and crafted one of the most legendary careers in modern public service as the liberal lion of the US Senate, wracking up more actual impact on our nation’s policy structure than both of his vaunted brothers combined. Love him or hate him, Ted Kennedy has made his mark in permanent ink, and in doing so, affected how this nation will see itself for the foreseeable future.

In fact, all great leaders have had that moment when, tested by very personal pain, they reached within themselves and discovered the strength to be that leader – and with it, the capacity to realize the value in service to that which is greater than themselves. Hillary’s pain at being publicly rejected in her bid for the White House may have this very same impact on her, and if it does, it will be we the people who will benefit from that transformation. She certainly has the capacity to remake the world we call home, and hopefully, she’ll find the reason to place herself far enough beneath that world to be able to help us all lift it to where it needs to rise.

Today Hillary’s hired flacks will be crowing about how she looked “presidential” and how she deserves the nod because she was able to be more magnanimous – as though any of that is relevant to the job description – but I just hope and pray that the candidate herself – the woman herself – never forgets that moment when she just may have come to terms with the possibility that she will never become the nation’s first woman president, and that, if it best serves the needs of the people of the nation itself, that she was okay with that possibility.

As I’ve written before, we need both of these candidates on our team as we prepare to do battle against the monsters that have been stuffed under our bed while we allowed the Bush team to sing us to sleep with lullabies that should have had us bolting from the room. The time is coming when we’ll need to grab these beasts and properly throttle them into the submissive role they were meant to play in our society. We’ll need all the help we can get.

Last night I caught a whiff of pure fresh air as that debate wound down to its final seconds, and it felt good as it entered my lungs. I want more of it. I can’t go back to the putrid stench that’s been passed off as oxygen for as long as I can remember. I won’t.