Politics, art draw perception parallels

Tuesday night, the world watched, Bloomington had an impromptu parade, and I sat in my living room staring transfixed as state by state ushered in the reality of President-elect Barack Obama.

All one has to do to examine Obama’s public appeal is go back to the debates. Obama consistently polled higher than John McCain in questions of seeming ready to perform the job or seeming trustworthy enough to be telling the truth. In short, it was a question of how America viewed Obama as observers that led to the results.

What we see here is an incredible shedding of the common ideas of American perception. There was a time, not even two years ago, when questions of race, religion, ethnic background and other factors would have muddled that perception, thus giving America an entirely subjective and distorted way of viewing politics. Now, thanks to a mobilized force of Americans who looked at American politics in a clearer way, we have witnessed the act of a minority representative (in many aspects) who, earlier on, didn’t seem viable to take the White House.

This is the way art goes about trying to achieve its goals, by producing a clear presentation of something viewed, finding others who agree with that view and fueling it as counterculture until it becomes publicly accepted.

Obama’s presidency is a phenomenon not only in American politics but in American pop counter-cultural studies. What happens next will hopefully play out in the same fresh, clear view of ourselves, as Americans, that persuaded us to this point today.

It is still quite a surreal notion that hasn’t fully sunk in yet. It is one that, after a seemingly endless two-year period of deliberation, I can easily get used to, which made it seem odd when I was watching the election coverage. Where were the complications? Why were Florida and Ohio getting their votes in so efficiently? Where was the militia of hill people from West Virginia trying to stop the results?

What initially seemed would be a gruesome, indeterminate battle for the presidency even up to election night was in fact a quick fell swoop of what America clearly wanted.

McCain’s concession speech came just as mere projections were coming in, and that was that. What followed was the flawless and impassioning ushering in of the first black family in the White House. And what this reveals about the desired perceptions of the American people is extraordinary.