Jul 25
Yesterday afternoon I drove down to the Las Vegas headquarters of the Barack Obama Presidential Campaign. I had been invited down by one of the coordinators with the hassle free intention of simply ‘checking things out,’ but within twenty minutes of walking through the door I had been offered, and then somehow accepted, a position as a precinct captain. Now what exactly that job entails I can’t yet say – because I don’t yet know – but for the most part it would seem that I have become an official Obama cheerleader of sorts. The specific duties of the post remain to be seen.
After signing my name to a few forms I was then directed to a desk and asked if I would mind writing a letter to the editor – or LTE as they, in the government periphery as they are, so eloquently abbreviated. I’ve already written a handful of LTE’s of my own, all of them to the school newspaper and none of them friendly, but this first task proved more daunting than I expected. Writing a “personal” letter for anonymous public consumption is difficult enough (as ironically evidenced by this website). However, I immediately recognized that what they wanted was not really my opinion so much as a piece of personalized propaganda; a well thought out product placement meant to appear coincidental. The transparency was so obvious that I couldn’t even begin to type. I hated the feeling of becoming a part of that superficial machine. Eventually I made it work, though.
The letters are supposed to be both personal and topical – for a better shot of actually being published – and if possible highlight some policy point of Senator Obama. That added a new complication. See, I have a tremendous amount of respect for the senator and so I felt the added pressure of not just making myself look like an idiot – which I’ve already come to accept as an unavoidable certainty – but our candidate as well. Moreover, I didn’t want to misquote the senator and wrongly attribute some policy initiative to his name. I decided to play it a bit safe on my first attempt and chose personal over policy while avoiding the specifics. It still feels cheap and manipulative, and just as transparent as all the rest, but it’s a part of politics. And after all, I suppose it isn’t such a terrible thing to be bad at something I despise.
As summer draws to a close most of my friends are excitedly gearing up for
another year in college. Some, however, are spending these hot weeks
preparing themselves for an even hotter destination: Iraq. A number of my
friends enlisted in the military reserves to help them pay for college, but
due to the current administration’s poor handling of the war in Iraq too
many of these students are now ending up in a desert instead of a
classroom. And there is no end in sight.Fortunately, there is hope.
Senator Barack Obama has been a constant and vocal opponent to the war in
Iraq. More important than that, though, he understands and appreciates the
difference between defending our country and fighting an increasingly
pointless war. Under Senator Obama’s leadership in 2008 we can find a way
to both protect our freedom and bring our family and friends back home.
Whatever.
After the letter was finished and mailed off I was given a list of names and phone numbers and the outline of a script. Great, telemarketing. If there is one thing I hate more than being manipulated in writing it’s being manipulated over the phone. And even though I wasn’t actually selling anything, and my list contained only registered Democrats, my stomach still roiled at the notion. To be honest I don’t understand how other people can do it so easily. Inherent to the process is the fact that the vast majority of the people you call will automatically hate you for it. I mean, I don’t even like talking on the phone to people I actually know. Cold calling strangers is no small torture.
But I did it.
I hoped that with some experience I might learn and get better, subsequent calls not being so painful. Obviously I’m an idiot. My last call of the day was just as horrifying and uncomfortable as the first. Actually, in a lot of ways it was much worse.
See, the purpose of my phone call was to inform local Democrats about the upcoming January caucus. It turns out that the caucus is a really big deal, and until I walked into Obama HQ yesterday afternoon I basically knew nothing about it. The democratic caucus is what determines our primary delegates who in turn ultimately determine our party’s national candidate. All the people who were as bummed as I was to end up with John Kerry, have their state caucuses – and themselves – to thank. Normally Nevada goes 37th in national order of caucuses; at which point the candidate has pretty much already been decided. However, this election we go 2nd. That makes the caucus a very big deal because momentum built up in the early primaries will carry over into the later ones (again, see: John Kerry vs Howard Dean).
So anyways, my job for the afternoon was to call up local Democrats, inform them of the upcoming caucus, and then try to get them to be involved in support of Barack Obama. Short of actually convincing them to come down to headquarters I was expected to at least get a sense of which candidate they were currently favoring and which issues concerned them the most. That is a very innocuous task; in fact it could be well argued that my phone call was actually helpful in that I was there to provide relevant and important, potentially world-changing information. But at heart both ends of the telephone knew that I was just another telemarketer.
The vast majority of my phone calls never picked up, which always came as a relief. The remaining percentage could be equally divided into Good and Bad. The Good was surprisingly good. A small handful of people, mostly women, took the opportunity of my phone call to actually have a real conversation. I spoke with one old lady about why she felt Hillary was “going to kick serious ass.” I spoke to a man about Senator Obama’s beliefs on the storage of nuclear waste (a big deal here in Nevada where they are trying to create a national dumping grounds). Another woman wished she could come down to the headquarters but she had been so sick that she asked if I could send the information to her at the hospital.
And then there was The Bad. The kindest of these were the abrupt hangups, the loud click that hurts your ears as the receiver is slammed down. I learned to begin the conversation with the ear piece held slightly away from my head. One degree beyond that were the people who were simply not helpful, worse only because they wasted my time and left me frustrated. When I asked one woman if she was leaning towards any particular candidate at this point she simply replied, “yes.” An awkward pause. “Would you mind if I asked who?” A brief pause and then, “Yes I do. That is personal and I intend to keep it that way!” Alright. I can respect that, but there’s no need to be a d-bag about it.
The worst of all, though, came from one man at the very end of my call sheet who managed to wreck what was an already horrible experience. The conversation began as usual with my informing him about the caucus. He already knew about it, and then unprompted told me that he would be voting for John Edwards. I politely asked him if there was any particular issue he felt to be more important than the others in his decision of candidates. His response was unexpected.
“I’m not voting for a Muslim.”
There was still another awkward pause, this one from genuine shock on my part. He took my surprise in another light, though.
“You DO know that he’s Muslim right?”
I began to regroup.
“Well, actually sir…”
“You mean you don’t care that he’s a dirty Muslim?!”
“No, I wouldn’t care, but the truth…”
“I’m not voting for any damned dirty Muslim. And that’s that.”
I gave up. There was really no point.
“Alright, sir. Well thank you for your time.”
I marked him down in the Edwards (white Christian man) column. The ignorance and hatred was a little bit staggering. And worse still, his audacity in assuming that it was only because I didn’t know that Obama was a Muslim that I could have ever supported him. In his mind he was doing me a favor by letting me know about it.
The truth of course is that Barack Obama is not a Muslim; a point he would not allow me to make. So in the end not only does that man hate the senator for no reason, but he hates him for no reason… for no reason.
If it wasn’t so pathetic and sad it might actually be funny.