Holding Out For A Hero.

I had the honor of meeting (fellow Leo) Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) this week. Everyone, including Time magazine, Meet the Press, and Oprah are asking him if he's going to be our next president. We should be so lucky. The gentleman from Illinois was in Denver to sign his new book, The Audacity of Hope.

My pal Jan went to the ever-amazing Tattered Cover early on Tuesday morning to get in line for free tickets to Senator Obama's book signing. Jan, the ever-dedicated-democrat, waited in line for hours and got ticket #273. They were only giving out 300 tickets, so we lucked out. I joined her at noon and spent the lunch hour with Jan, in line with 500 of our closest friends. We were not in the same room as the book signing-- the line serpentined through the second floor of the historic Tattered Cover.

The social structure of lines is fascinating to me. Truth be told, Jan and I can have fun where ever we are. But a captive audience is even more fun for us. We chatted up our neighbors in line, talking about politics and ballot initiatives. Within minutes we knew the names of the people standing around us. I even had business cards from two of them asking for me to send them some information on my "how to vote" views and those of scary-smart people like my buddy Pat. People in line share so many similar interests with you. And, well, you're waiting together. And probably more than just physically together.

Jan told me of a conversation she overheard between a Tattered Cover employee and a woman who bought Obama's book at a deep discount at Costco. Jan was so proud of the employee that explained to this woman, and anyone else who would listen, that is costs money to put on events like this, and talked more about the hidden value we get from shopping at the Tattered Cover. Jan thanked every Tattered Cover employee we saw for hosting the book signing- an important lesson on local economics.

There was electricity in the air when Senator Obama arrived. The crowd cheered and applauded. I got chills. Jan beamed when I whispered to her that this is how we should feel about our leaders. And our heros. Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper introduced the Senator. The Senator spoke for just five minutes and it energized me all week.

Obama explained his view that it's easy to be cynical-- what's risky is to be hopeful. He invited us to be hopeful with him about things like health insurance, our planet, our jobs, education, war, and diplomacy. Senator Obama reminded us that the characters on the cable news programs do not represent us as a people, and that's not where we should direct our questions or our energy. Everyone is "entitled to their own opinion, but people are not entitled to their own facts." He described this book as a "framework for disagreeing without being disagreeable" and hoped that "we can make progress and still have conflict." What a great definition of democracy.

But that's not what we heard from Defense Secretary Rumsfeld today. He was pretty disagreeable, telling reporters to "back off" and "relax" when they questioned him on a timeline for Iraq. With October 2006 trending to be the deadliest month for US soldiers, we can't relax anymore. Relax during wartime? Of course, Rummy wrote off the passion of these reporters as election season ploys to make him and his coworkers look bad. Do they really need help with that?