I’m still pretty young, so I never really started to pay attention to politics until Clinton’s second term (though I was still too young to vote – I turned 18 a month after George W. Bush took office). My view of events of that time period was one of a President being criticized by his opponents not for any political policy or any action undertaken by his administration but for personal failings that had nothing to do with the governing of the country.

Maybe that has been the way politics has always worked, but in Barack Obama’s presidential campaign I saw something different. Much was made of Obama spending lots of money on “negative advertisements”, but I have seen many of the ads that were run by both sides, both here and in California, and while Obama’s ads often attacked John McCain’s policies I never saw one that impugned his character the way that McCain’s ads attempted to do to Obama.

When John McCain said Obama’s name during his concession speech, the audience booed. When Obama said McCain’s name during his victory speech, there was applause. That is the difference I see – that we can have disagreements in political discourse without succumbing to the personal animosity that has been so present in politics for my entire adult life.

And yeah, there are definitely some people who have a somewhat distorted view of Obama as a messianic figure that will sweep into power and make everything better. I’m certainly not one of those, and anyone who paid attention to Obama’s speech on Tuesday knows that he is not either. I believe that Obama will be a good President, and will make decisions and implement policies that will benefit our country – us as a people. The real promise for the future, though, is that maybe we will finally be able to return to our nation’s historical roots. The secret of our country’s success since it’s inception has always been that we value the individual, but always as a member of the community. We as a people have been willing to make sacrifices in our lives for the greater good not because of some communist or socialist ideal, but because we genuinely care about the well-being of our neighbors whether or not we agree with them.

We have strayed from that path and have too long followed a misguided philosophy that confuses naked greed for noble individualism and cares more for the wealth of the individual than the good of the community. Over the next four years I am sure that we as individuals will be asked to make sacrifices – sacrifices that probably should have been asked of us long before – but I believe that this is our chance to rebuild our communities and show that real patriotism is found not in lapel pins and bumper stickers but in the spirit of compatriotism and unity that our country was founded on.

Usually this is the kind of post that I spend half an hour writing and then never publish, but I think that one of the changes that I need to make in my life is to stop shunning this kind of discussion so that I can really try to become part of the community of ideas that I claim to believe in.