This is the story of how we begin to remember.

Well. We did it. Yes we did.

I still can't quite believe it.

Last Wednesday, my dad gushed that I'd gotten to cast this vote in my third presidential election. He'd been waiting 40 years, he said.

After (only) eight years, I got to cast an aspirational vote -- and win.

A President who reads newspapers. Who reads poetry.

More.

A President who recognizes the times that try men's souls; a President who seeks new thinking and better angels; a President who trusts democracy. A President who engages the world; who engages ideas; who engages dissenters.

Last week, I was accused--amusingly but seriously--by a colleague of being drunk on Obama Kool-aid when I expressed approval of the Rahm Emanuel pick. I still like the pick. But I don't think I've drunk the Kool-aid...all right, I may have sipped it. But that's not the point.

The point is that my colleague's larger accusation was that I was rationalizing a disappointing decision. I was, in his view, actively avoiding my first disappointment with my preferred (and trumpeted) President-Elect. I wasn't. I couldn't have been.

I'm already disappointed. No praising of Rahmbo will postpone Obama's first failure. He has already failed me.

His stance on same-sex marriage is a deep disappointment and a shameful failure. His stance is, in fact, the same stance ratified by Californians with Prop 8 last Tuesday -- even as they elected him President by the biggest margin since FDR. Ok, so he didn't support Prop 8 because he doesn't support amending the state's constitution to deny a right to same-sex marriage. His stance is for full civil unions, full civil rights -- everything except that word, "marriage." And that's, essentially, what Prop 8 has left for gay Californians. That is to say: not nearly enough.



It's difficult to express how enormously inadequate that answer is. How enormously not enough.

Maybe Obama's opposition to same-sex marriage is more tactical than principled (like his opposition to health insurance mandates might be). Maybe coming out more strongly against Prop 8--doing ads, say--would have lost him votes, in California or elsewhere. It seems all but certain that coming out strongly for same-sex marriage would have lost him votes -- maybe enough to lose him the election.

So if it was tactics, it was understandable; if it was principles, it was wrong. But either way, President-Elect Obama is already, by this measure, a disappointment and a failure.

I, of course, knew that when I voted for him. And I wanted him elected despite it. And I phone-banked for him and canvassed for him and got out his vote. And if someone asked me about his opposition to same-sex marriage--which happened only twice--I rationalized it away (the lesser of possible evils, which I still believe) and worked the vote anyway. And in that way, I disappointed myself. And his failure became my own.

And our failure hurt people I love, even as I (and they) celebrated on November 4. Yes we did.

That night, just as Obama was about to speak to the crowd gathered in Grant Park, I finally got the overwhelmed California Secretary of State website to load. And I announced the percentages to my friends. Disbelief. Holding out hope for remaining precincts (which would not, in the end, help), we settled into silence as our candidate and his family took to the stage.

He told us that night, that he would be the whole country's President. That he needed all of our help.

And we will do our part. Gladly. Proudly. Fired up.

But we needed his help, too. And he let us down.

And so this victory, like too many victories, is bittersweet. Too many of us blackened our neighbors' eyes, as we blackened our historic ovals. Too many of us--our President-Elect, included--shut our ears to the howling, and turned our heads against the wind. In this way, as in so many others, the coming moment on January 20, 2009, is not enough.
But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger.

A more perfect union? A just and lasting peace among ourselves? Not yet. But some day, soon I hope, we will, all of us, get there.

The mystic chords of memory will yet swell the chorus of the Union.
And the morning will be breaking.

And don't cry, baby, don't cry. Don't cry.


(Image: David Stubbart, Some rights reserved)