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    U.N.I.T.Y.

    Posted Thursday, October 30, 2008 9:09 AM | By Sarah Wildman
    Like Meghan, I too loved the aesthetic of the infomercial. It had all of the Horatio Alger glory of an NBC Olympic-hopeful hagiography, spliced with the better cinematography of great Hollywood. You know in those movies the good guys always win, and yet I cry every time. Beyond family values, Obama underscored again what's been his hallmark since 2004: unity. That Boston speech never fails to move me. It's about refusing to use the politics of division to win. McCain, to his discredit and to his detriment, has never picked up on the yearning the vast majority of this country has to be more alike than different, more unified in a goal toward betterment. I'm a little sappier these days, but I think that I'm not alone in that sentiment. It's why Obama's appeal in the infomercial to all our immigrant roots works. Bill Richardson mentions it toward the end of the segment—the importance, and uniqueness, of Obama's efforts toward unity: racial, political, economic, historic. The other night on Hardball, a McCain flack pooh-poohed the idea of unity as a "platitude." But I don't think it is. Sure, he hammers on it a lot, but Obama's efforts to sew this country together—and his genuine intellectual curiosity (as opposed to what scares me most about Palin, to go back to Meghan's earlier post: her Bush style lack of curiosity and what appears to be a disinterest in seeing beyond the world she currently lives in), has always made him the most attractive of candidates. 
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