Dreams From My Father

Stephen Roddick from the New Republic

I entered my Brooklyn voting booth this morning uncertain who would get my vote.

Let me explain. My father was a Navy pilot who attended the Naval Academy not long after John McCain. I grew up in Navy towns where you did not see your dad for six months at a time, you went to sleep wondering if he was safe, and you comforted your buddies when their fathers did not come back at all. When I was 13, my father did not come back; he was killed in a plane crash off the USS Kitty Hawk.

There are few things I know with certainty that my father would have done if he had lived. One would have been to vote for John McCain. As his only son, that seemed the least I could do for him.

But it wasn't that simple. I spent almost a decade living in Chicago, working in politics. I labored for black candidates in lost causes, not far from Barack Obama's district. I shed tears when they lost. I then worked on Capitol Hill for a Democratic predecessor of Obama's in the Senate, and, inexplicably, helped draft the first Senate prayer given by a Muslim, Wallace Mohammed.

For months, I watched the campaign develop with a sense of dread. McCain seemed like a lost, tragic hero more than a plausible president. Still, John McCain was my kin, in a sort of way. I bit my lip all fall. I watched the markets fall and McCain's botched response remove the last doubt that he was going to lose, perhaps badly. I avoided political conversations for the most part, but found myself at a friend's house on the Upper West Side watching the last debate with a group of Ivy Leaguers and policy wonks. The derision of McCain began early. After the 17th joke about his strange facial expressions, I left, telling my host that I didn't have a problem with folks not supporting him, but the vilification of a man who spent longer in a prison camp than Obama spent in the Senate wasn't how I wanted to spend my evening.

After that, I became more open about my McCain empathy. I argued how he had a proven record of working across the aisle and despises Bush and why his administration would be nothing like Bush's, particularly with heavy Democratic majorities in both houses. But I knew it was window dressing.

I just went to vote. The line snaked so long that I was able to concentrate on the excitement on the faces of African-Americans as they entered the voting booths with their children. I was more than a little envious of their joy. I wondered if the past was really past. Finally, I entered the booth, closed the curtain, and stared at the names. I stared so long that I could hear folks behind me begin to grumble. I delayed by individually pulling the Democratic levers for all the local offices. My finger went to McCain/Palin, but I didn't pull. I moved my hand over and grasped the Obama/Biden lever. I pulled it hard and departed. There were tears in my eyes.