Warm Memories of a Chilly Day
SPRINGFIELD, Il — The last time I stood in the plaza outside the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois, I lost the feeling in my toes.
I was huddled with 17,000 others in near zero temperatures to help Barack Obama launch an improbable challenge to the prevailing politics and policies of Washington.
Men, women and children from around the country shivered together in the shadow of the hulking capitol where Abraham Lincoln once served. They had come, an aroused citizenry, to change the course of history, and the sheer joy and energy of that mission made the threat of frostbite a trivial concern.
I returned to Springfield on Wednesday, not in a rented campaign van, but on Air Force One, accompanying the President of the United States on the anniversary of his audacious announcement.
As we walked into the empty plaza, the scene came alive in my memory: A young man at the podium, his voice booming off the surrounding buildings. Thousands of supporters shaking handmade signs, roaring their approval.
“I’d crawl to Iowa to work for this guy,” one middle-aged man told us that day, a sentiment I heard from so many others.
Frigid cold be damned! They came to make history and change the country’s course.
And they would.
Now I glanced over at the President, surrounded by a phalanx of Secret Service agents, the rigors of nine tough years were told in graying hair and a lined face. And yet Obama seemed as happy and loose as I had seen him in a long time.
He recalled the haunts and hijinks of his eight years as a state legislator, of friendships across party lines and geographical boundaries.
“We fought hard for our positions. I don’t want to be nostalgic here — we voted against each other all the time,” the President said later during a speech to the Illinois General Assembly. “But those relationships, that trust we’d built meant that we came at each debate assuming the best in one another and not the worst… We didn’t call each other idiots or fascists who were trying to destroy America. Because then we’d have to explain why we were playing poker or having a drink with an idiot or a fascist who was trying to destroy America.”
I watched this speech from the gallery with a group of the President’s old state senate colleagues. One, a suburban Chicago Republican named Kirk Dillard, had delivered a testimonial for Obama during the early days of the 2008 race.
It wasn’t an endorsement, just kind words about a friend with whom Dillard was able to work on some issues. In fact, Dillard supported John McCain for president in 2008. Yet his participation in the video was used against him in 2010 and 2014, when he narrowly lost two primary races for governor.
Having produced the video with Dillard’s testimonial, I felt I had to apologize for putting him in such jeopardy. “Ah, that’s ok,” he shrugged. “We do what we have to do.”
The Springfield to which the President returned this week is not as convivial as the one in which he served. The state’s new Republican governor, Bruce Rauner, is locked in a bitter budget struggle with the Democratic legislature, insisting on anti-labor provisions as the price for his support.
As the President made his plea to return to a politics of mutual respect, the Republican legislators mostly sat on their hands, staring blankly — just like their counterparts in Congress during State of the Union addresses.
So much of what Obama promised nine years ago has come to pass. He has turned around an ailing economy, enacted health reform, promoted clean energy, wound down two wars, lifted up diplomacy, and so much more. But people of all political stripes also responded to his call for national unity, healing and renewal.
And on that score, we as a country have more work to do.
As great as it was to return to Springfield, it is a bitter disappointment that the climate in Washington today is as chilly as the weather on that historic announcement day.
