I cast my vote for Barak Obama today, thanks to CPCC being an early voting venue. This is, at long last, the first vote I've cast.

Incidentally, they used touchscreen voting machines, which printed out results onto a roll of receipt tape as I entered them, and there was no wait or difficulty to actually start voting. And they weren't Diebold machines (yes, I checked).

In any case, afterwards I read the Charlotte Observer Forum for today, which included a comment I found interesting:

... Should votes really be cast on whether our country should have a female president or a black president first? Or should they be based on issues such as education and immigration that affect the lives of every citizen? --Carly Hambridge

It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that yes - in many situations, elections are symbolic. I don't agree with all of Obama's policies. For instance, I don't like his lack of commitment opening up America's borders to immigration, although, living in the South, I'll admit that I understand that kowtowing to nativist groups is often necessary for the mere courtesy of being taken seriously. But I'm still voting for him, because I'm not just voting for myself - I'm voting for who I think would be the best candidate for the country. And heck, I'm not even just voting for America, I'm voting for what America's face to the rest of the world will be.

To be honest, I'm not that big a fan of the "change" thing. Change for the sake of change is just that. And if you're going to make the case for change, you have to make the case that something is broken, which I think is very hard to do. In hardly 200 years we've gone from an essentially anarchic international regime to one that is increasingly grounded in rule of law, even in the international sphere. This is a huge accomplishment for all of humanity, and something that I am, and you should be, proud of.

This is a progression we should, of course, continue. There's a lot of work left to be done, but it's progress: a march towards future. That steady, sure, impatient-yet-motivated march of liberalism and humanism is something I find more appealing than talk of revolutions or, indeed, of 'change.' But, Obama is smart - he knows what he's doing, in both campaigning and forming political views, so I can trust that he can see this progression of history, and would usher it along during his years in office.

Yes, It's More Than Policy

So the answer to Carly's question is that, yes, the context of a candidacy is important for casting a vote. While both Clinton and Obama have politics that I would prefer greatly over McCain's, my reason for preferring Obama is not policy. My reason for preferring Obama is that when Indonesia sees that we elected a childhood resident of their nation as our President, they will have an image of America that more closely represents what I want my country to be perceived as, and, I hope, more closely represents what we are in substance as well.

Voting for Obama is my way of telling my country that my generation doesn't just talk the talk of racial equality: we're actually ready for it in real life. And electing Obama is America's way of telling the world that we're better than we've shown in the last generation. We're better than wars and wars and false dichotomies to justify our isolationism. And, for that matter, we're better than isolationism, too.

I know this is stating the obvious, but, Clinton is the wife of a former United States president. She cannot go to Jerusalem and say that she's playing with a full deck: she'll always be distrusted by both sides because of Camp David. Obama, on the other hand, could do it. She can't claim to have good-faith negotiations with Venezuela: Obama can. And any action she takes in Darfur will contain echoes of Rwanda in 1994; Obama will able, politically, to make judgements based on the situations of today, and not those of generations past.

These are the important issues of my generation. Despite the slight economic uncertainty of the nation as I'm writing this, the fact is that basic material scarcity is by and large a solved problem in this century. We know how to feed and clothe and house the world. My generation's struggle will, frankly, be deciding whether or not we care enough to do it.

But that's a subject for another day.