by Charlie Ericksen
Charlie Ericksen
The day after Obama’s election, his first major act was to announce his presidential transition team. He selected a diverse brain-trust of 12 men and women to recommend and screen applicants for high-level posts in his new administration. He also named the 13 staff leaders he chose to implement and run the operation.
Federico Peña, the former Denver mayor who committed to Obama’s candidacy early, was the lone Hispanic among the 25 hand-picked to participate in the transition process.
Admittedly, these appointments, while significant, are just a first salvo. Obama could end up naming New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson as his Secretary of State. Or find a spot that might lure the multi-talented Peña, who served as Secretary of Transportation as well as Energy in Clinton’s Cabinets, back into full-time public service.
For 6.5 million Hispanics who went against the white tide to give Obama their trust and votes, that could start the validation of his promise of expansive, inclusive “change” in our multi-hued nation.
In Spanish, the word “change” can be translated a couple of ways. One carries the connotation Obama wants voters to accept: a new beginning. Another reference is to a few loose coins in someone’s purse or pocket. Cambio. Just as in English, small change.
Change is what Barack Obama, our soon-to-be president, promised us all.
White voters didn’t think it was necessary. Had John McCain won, our 232-year national tradition of electing a white male to lead us would be intact.
White non-Hispanic voters backed McCain by a 12-point margin, 55 percent 43 percent. That was determined by a nationwide exit poll of 17,244 voters prepared for four TV news networks and the Associated Press. It ran in The Washington Post the day after the Nov. 4 election. A 12-point spread — that’s “mandate” territory.
Obama gained the U.S. presidency through an explosion of long-suppressed political energy by black voters, who supported him by an astounding 96 percent-4 percent, and Hispanics, who joined them, 67 percent-31 percent, the pollsters reported. Together, blacks and Hispanics are nearing a third of the U.S. population.
In this election year they combined to comprise close to a quarter of its registered voters.
As the presidential campaign shifted into high gear in the fall and millions of fresh, new dollars flowed into the Obama coffers, an effective television ad barrage was directed toward Hispanic voters in key battleground states. Money very well spent.
It negated all those stories carried by the daily press and television network news stations that Latinos wouldn’t vote for a black. That falsehood was spread wide both before and after Hillary Clinton was cleaning Barack Obama’s clock 2-1 or better among Hispanics in the primaries.
The reality is that Obama showed up quite late in our parts of town with much less on his political résumé than Hillary Clinton to demonstrate that he had any real awareness of the Hispanic community or concern for this country’s 50 million Latinos’ diverse needs.
He voted to fund a wall separating Mexico and the United States and carefully avoided engaging in debate on specifics about comprehensive immigration reform and what to do about the reported 12 million undocumented U.S. residents who have become an essential part of the machinery of our society.
To his credit, our new president took one lonely, unpopular stand during the primary debates, stating in plain English that driver’s license applicants should not have to prove the legality of their residency status. That’s a common-sense traffic safety issue, not an immigration one. Obama diagnosed it correctly and took lots of flack for doing so.
There’s another way the word “change” is used in English. When we’re going down the highway, sometimes we “change lanes.” And on occasion, to avoid barriers, we “merge.”
That’s the challenge for Obama and other politicians who want to lead us — the move from “change” to “merge.” The trick will be to stay pointed in the same direction.
(Charlie Ericksen is founding publisher, with his late wife, Sebastiana Mendoza, and their son, Héctor, of Washington, D.C. E-mail him at Charlie@hispaniclink.org). ©2008
