Learning to Believe

It is January 2007. The first time I hear your name, that I can remember, is in an email from Callis. I am in Venice Beach, living in a roachy shack by the pier. I am waiting tables. I can see the waves from my porch. It never rains and everyone is beautiful.

My brother is 15. He ran away from home. He is sleeping on my couch. When my roommates want to watch TV, he sleeps in the alley next to the house, or on the beach. He has a job at the Cold Stone. He will not shut up about you.

The first time Callis mentions you I think it is a joke. Your name is incredible. It’s like a character from Team America. An absurd combination of our two Middle Eastern villains, bordering on silly. He thinks you can become the President. I think he is naive. I’m just happy he cares about politics, I guess.

He and a friend drove all the way to Louisville from Lexington to see you speak. You held a low dollar event in Kentucky in February. I think this is suspicious. I think maybe you are just trying to sell more books. He waited in the rain. Your motorcade passed him as he left the event, and your window was down. He yelled that he loved you. You yelled that you loved him back.

Callis got a cold, after the event. He left school without permission. He got suspended. He got fed up. He bought a one way plane ticket to LA. He is tired of Kentucky. He wants to live by the beach, and scoop ice cream, and talk to me about you. He believes.

I think about Chase, and Iraq. He wasn’t political, really. I think about this art exhibit I saw, back in college. The Vassar chapel, filled with military boots, each with a name and a rank. Some had little notes in them, from people who knew them. The exhibit traveled, from one city to another, across the country. Chase’s had a little piece of paper. A little drawing of a dinosaur, and a note. RIP CJC. He and Devin used to draw that dinosaur on the lockers in middle school.

I think about Quinn. He says he just flies the smaller planes. The ones that deliver the mail to the aircraft carriers. Ben had a kid. He quit worrying about football. He joined ROTC. Am I sure they wont have to go? Am I sure I won’t know someone else? Slowly, I begin to believe, too.

I put everything I own into a Volvo station wagon. I drive Callis home, and I drive to New Hampshire. Jack and Rob have a job for me. The drug works fast. Two weeks in my car is stolen, with everything still in it. I barely even notice. That’s just stuff. I’m changing the world.

It is December 19th, 2007 in Manchester, NH. We are working a ropeline together. You shake my hand. I notice how long and thin your fingers are. My fingers are little sausages. I eat Dunkin Donuts every single day. I push my way through secret service, desperate to get supporter cards from the people you speak to.

Out of the crowd — seeming to rise over top and through it — a surfer down a wave of arms and faces, Nancy Harris descends. She is holding her supporter card. It is already filled out. She wants to hand it to you herself. You thank her, and she says “Don’t thank me, Thank Noland.”

When I knocked on her door earlier that month it was late, and cold, and she was undecided. I sat with her awhile, in her living room. She said she’d give it some thought.

You have been told my name, moments before. This is the only five minute period, ever, during which you will know my name. She says Noland, and you look back at me. You smile, and say, “Sounds like you’ve been working pretty hard.” Your smile is incredible. I have no idea what I say back. I have no idea why God has given me this blessing. All I know is that I don’t deserve it, and there are a hundred people, with two hundred hands, reaching for you, and I need to get them to sign supporter cards. We finish and you go back to the volunteer clutch. I don’t ask for a photo. I am too embarrassed. I am sure someone took one on the rope line.

It is January, 2008. We won Iowa yesterday. My staging location is the Manchester headquarters. It is, suddenly, filled with celebrities. Arianna Huffington and Larry David are supposed to be making phone calls. They aren’t, really. Samantha Power is walking around the phone bank. The volunteers hand her the phone when a voter has a question about foreign policy. Someone brings a man named Bob over to me, and I send him out to canvass. Someone says he runs a bank, called UBS. They say he is a billionaire. There is a mentally ill man who volunteered for me sleeping in the hallway of the office. He is telling reporters he may kill me after the election. We don’t want to call the police, that might cause a bad story. We hope the reporters think he is joking.

I am Mad At You. There was a debate, and you told Hillary she was “likeable enough.” On the doors they yell when they see my Obama buttons. “IT’S HER TURN!!” I don’t think she’s very likeable either. But why would you SAY it. These people have been mad at the world for not liking her for a long time. Such a small thing, a tiny mistake. I can’t think of even one other time you have made a mistake. I am pouting. I’m really just frustrated with myself. I can’t fill my GOTV shifts. Rob is really mad. I’m so tired.

It is election day in New Hampshire. People are bringing unfinished packets back to me, and leaving to go to Nashua for the party. I am screaming at them. I am 23. Susan Rice emerges from the back of the room, grabs the unfinished packets and takes them out into the night. We are losing. My life is over.

You walk out onto the stage. You are ok. You are smiling. Your life is not over. Maybe my life isn’t over either. You warn me about the chorus of cynics. You remind me that there has never been anything false about hope. I’m so vulnerable. Deep, previously unreachable parts of me have become raw and exposed. I am changing. Petulant parts of me, parts that run from long odds and cower in the face of failure, they begin to recede. You find the seeds of humility and resiliency and optimism and place them deeper inside my heart and coax them to life. Belief is a muscle. Mine is growing. I wonder what I have done to deserve you.

I am in rural South Carolina. It is still January. It is warm, finally. I brought Tito, and Will. They are Not In Massachusetts Anymore. Neither am I, really. I pretend like this isn’t that different from Kentucky. It is. Christina tells us what to wear to church, and what to say. People look at us like we are from another planet. Maybe we are. They are still a bit skeptical. A black man, named Barack Hussein something… running for President? But they heard about Iowa. They are starting to believe.

I am alone, in my bathrobe, in an empty home in the suburbs on election day. This is my boiler room. We win. I run outside, and yell, and ninja kick across the front yard. It is warm out, even in January. No one sees me. Everyone is at work. I head to the victory party. The building has been full for hours, the fireman won’t let us in. I go early to the after party. Bird gets the mic. He looks so young. He is fired up, his gloves are off. He is yelling, mad and victorious all at once. They told us we couldn’t organize this way. They said this would never work. It worked. We won by 26 points. Underneath his bravado, underneath his pride in his team, it feels a little like Bird only just now completely believed it himself.

I start to realize that this may be how it works. You decide to believe. That you can organize a different way. That you can change people’s minds. That you can get them to care, more, or differently. That you, personally, specifically, you, can do something. You decide to believe, and you work, and by deciding and working, you make it true.

It is May, 2008. I am driving to Michigan. I am hiring people. I am in Charge of Things. Sort of. I need to convince people to quit their jobs, drop of out of college, leave their families, and come to Michigan. I need to convince them not to go to Ohio, or Florida. I have watched every speech you have given, again and again. I have all of the words. I tell them we have many paths to victory, but only one sure path to defeat — losing Michigan. I tell them we didn’t compete there in the primary. I tell them it is the most important state. I believe this. They believe me. I am unstoppable. I am driving too fast. My car is filled with clipboards.

Erin calls me in the middle of the night. I’m the boss. I’m 24. She’s only 20. I know way more about the world than she does. She is in Flint. She is in tears. She has to hang out in front of a liquor store to hit her voter reg goals. She is a one hundred pound white girl from New Hampshire. She got mugged. She is crying. I’m crying. Erica calls me. She got chased to her car one night in Saginaw. An organizer in north Michigan flips her car and doesn’t tell anyone. She is worried we would tell her to stop working. Jared says he has been throwing up in the shower in the morning. Angela gets a gun pulled on her in a one on one. I have no idea what to do.

Jake wants me to lead a nightly call for every volunteer in our region. He says they need this. He says I need to step up and lead. Betsy doesn’t want me to do this. She thinks it will be weird if one region does this and the other doesn’t. He tells me to suck it up. He is furious. She is furious. You are debating McCain. He is furious. You just stay cool. It makes him look cranky, and desperate. I try and stay cool. It doesn’t work. They are both still mad. I start doing the nightly calls. There are hundreds of people on the call. I have no idea what to say. I have no idea if they are even listening. The economy falls apart. You try and explain what happened. I don’t get it. I get on my nightly call. My staff asks me to explain what happened. I have no idea what to do.

It is September. Its getting colder. The senior staff wants us to run the GOTV program one way. We want to run it another way. They didn’t work in the primary. They were off doing something else. We were trying to get you elected. They don’t GET IT. We yell at them. We pout. We are children. We are the worst. But — we believe. We believe we can do things differently, things that seem radical, things that seem impossible. We believe in our way. It is the only reason we made it this far.

We win. Pat runs across the room and chest bumps me. I fly into the wall. Blake and Amy are doing a dance. We sit on the floor and watch you speak and we cry, and we cry and we cry.

Every single person in my life is calling me. People are giving me policy advice to pass along to you. One guy sends me a book that he wrote, to give to you. He knows that you will love it. I am in Chicago. A friend of yours has a residence in the Four Seasons, and he lets campaign staff stay there. It is so high up that I can’t use my cell phone from my room. It is so cold. I am so depressed. I used to have a Very Important Job. Now no one cares if I get out of bed. Most everyone else is depressed too. It makes us feel guilty, and confused, so we try and hide it. I wonder if you are depressed.

You ask us to move to Washington. I don’t have a better idea. Plus I’m tired of being depressed. I want to go back to feeling like that. I want to get back on the team.

It is 2011. We are in Washington. There have been… challenges. I am Mad At You again. Courtney talked to the press. She is saying she is disappointed in you. She wants you to do more on climate. She is running an environmental advocacy organization. I think it is so, so cool. So many people just wanted to work for the administration. Any job, anywhere, anyway. She is organizing! She is holding you accountable! She believes. I am so sure that you will think this is cool. But the article has been out for a few hours, and people are talking. People are saying that maybe, actually, you do NOT think that this is cool.

I’m sitting in Lafayette Park. I’m trying to get someone to text me back. Maybe Jordan, or Blake. Courtney is coming into the West Wing for a meeting later, and you will probably drop in. I want to talk to someone first. I want to get someone on the phone. I want to remind someone that Courtney worked long and hard for you.

I remember Courtney sitting on the floor. It was in Vermont, our fourth primary state. We had been in New Hampshire, three weeks in South Carolina, then back north to Maine, then Vermont. I’ve never been so cold. It was supposed to be over by Super Tuesday. The structure of the whole thing had started to come apart at this point. They started putting the kids in charge of things.

She was sitting on the floor, late at night. Every night. People were emailing the Vermont for Obama email address. Why were they doing this? Was the email address on the website? How long had it been there? Who is in charge of this? We were the only people checking it. These emails were so heartbreaking. Emails from people who somehow thought we might be able to help them with trouble getting health insurance, or some a problem with an unfair court case. You were a constitutional lawyer after all. Maybe you could help.

Courtney stayed up so late reading those emails, trying to figure out how to get help to people. Courtney stayed up late then, in Vermont, and answered those emails and now she stays up late, in Washington, she stays up late trying to do right — do right by a movement of young people who care about the environment, in a moment when no one else seems to.

She is trying to do right by them, and SOMEBODY had better damn well fucking THINK about that before one of those alpha hacks who wandered in from some shit consultancy after the election tries to dress her down in a building that we only have the keys to because SHE won them. That is NOT what our campaign was about. I am pacing back and forth in front of the North Gate. If someone would just text me back I’m sure we could sort this out.

No one texts me back. This is probably for the best. The meeting goes pretty well. You are stern and seem frustrated but ultimately fair about it. My pre-emptive indignation fades quickly. Courtney believes. I’m sure that you saw that. Maybe we can get a climate bill after the re-elect.

There was another shooting. This time they shot a congresswoman. A lady from Arizona. It feels like things are starting to… unravel. I wait until I have a quiet moment in the office, and I find an empty room where no one will know to look for me. I open my laptop and find the video of your remarks. I finally let myself think about it, about what happened. About a man with a gun, people gathered on a corner. You talk about them. You tell me their names. You tell me what they were like. About their wives and husbands and children and friends. The camera cuts to an intern. I wonder if they pay interns. Everyone is looking at him, clapping. He doesn’t know what to do. He just sits there, with his hands in his lap. He ran to help his boss. They shot her in the head. I cry and I cry. I don’t know what to do either.

You are so good at this. At being who we need in these moments. What a wonderful, terrible thing to be good at. I wonder if you hate it, hate how good you are at it. Hate that we need you to help us grieve, but can’t bring ourselves to let you try and put a stop to these things before they happen. I wonder what we have done to deserve you.

Its August, in 2014. I’m watching a press conference. I’m not even sure why. You are answering questions, talking about the Middle East, and Africa, and Ebola. I don’t understand anything you are talking about. But hell if you aren’t the smartest, calmest, most reasonable person I have ever seen in my life. How are you like this? Still, after everything? They refused to vote for anything you proposed. Actual reporters asked you about your birth certificate. Republicans are still telling their people you are a Muslim.

I want you to be Mad At Them. I want you to stop reaching out a hand, just to have it slapped away. In the primary, the Hillary people would laugh at us, call us naive. They said Washington would eat us alive. That we NEEDED someone willing to cut deals. Twist arms. Vote for wars. We hated them so much for that. Now we are emailing each other. Max, Allison, Wyant, Kidwell, Harper, Tito. I am worried. I ask them, what if they were right? Seeing you up there, answering the reporter’s questions, so reasonable. So unflinchingly, endlessly reasonable. In an unreasonable moment, in the least reasonable of times. Can someone be too reasonable? What would that say about our country, about us? Believing has gotten harder.

January 2017

I am in Chicago, in a long line, in a warehouse. You’ll be here soon. I hope I will get to the room before you do. I’m surrounded. Tens of thousands of people, waiting. I see someone I know. I see someone else I know. Every few seconds, another face, another memory. It is an assault — battering the walls of time and distance, and I am back there, back in all those places again. Back in Washington, drinking and talking, angry and concerned. Back in Chicago, cold and depressed. Back in Michigan, driving from office to office, proud and righteous. In South Carolina, in a suit, in a church, humbled. In New Hampshire, in Nancy Harris’s living room, hiding from the cold, trying to show them, trying to make them see, see the version of you that I see. In Venice, sand between my toes, half-listening to Callis, half-understanding.

We arrive in the room. You walk out, and I can see you, sort of. A small spec under bright lights, twenty thousand people away. You are going to be reasonable again. I know you are. I don’t know you, really, but I know this. You will be reasonable, and you will thank us.

When you talk to us, or about us, it is always obvious how you feel. At the staff ball in 2009. At headquarters, after the re-elect. These moments, for us, are wonderful and validating, but not surprising. They are a confirmation of something we have always known. We did something amazing together. Neither of us is the same, neither of us will ever really recover. And who could? Who would want to?

I wonder who you think about when you think about “us”. Which faces pop into your mind. Kidwell. Baia. O’Neil. Paulette. Yohannes. Maybe it’s just an idea. A vague picture of a high school kid with a handmade sign. A college kid in a room full of land lines, making calls. A 23 year old, who shaves his head to look older, leading a canvass training, learning to believe.

You say that you have one final ask of us as President. The room sucks in air, all twenty thousand, all at once. I know immediately what you are going to say. I am not the only one. The room tenses up, bracing itself. Of course. Of course you will. Of course you will, one more time. You will ask us to believe. You will ask us to believe that things can get better. You will ask us to believe that we can make things better. You will ask us to believe in ourselves.

My belief is sorely tested. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what we did to deserve you. But I still believe. Thank you.