Slate's Bizbox
dispatches: Notes from different corners of the world.

Monger Me, Obama!The mood in Texas.

By Meghan O'Rourke
Posted Monday, March 3, 2008, at 5:37 PM ET
Obama rally in Texas. Click image to expand.

SAN ANGELO, Texas—On Friday, I stood in the crowd at Barack Obama's San Antonio rally next to a gray-haired man reading Ficino's Platonic Theology in Latin. Beside him, a young interracial couple—which felt like the norm, rather than the exception, in the audience—hugged as Stevie Wonder played over the loudspeakers. The Verizon Wireless Center had a charged feel, and not just because of the rotation of soul songs blasting around us: Most of the rally-goers had waited for half an hour in a line that snaked to the edge of the parking lot while the flat light of the setting sun sliced the wide sky.

Even the cities in Texas have a quality of open space. At the rally, that quality translated into precisely the type of civic openness that Obama has advocated for throughout his campaign. The audience was talkative, friendly, and multiracial; earlier, everyone had held hands and prayed. The neo-Platonist said that Obama reminded him of Bobby Kennedy, the kind of figure able to inspire audiences to political action. He didn't understand Hillary's attacks on Obama's optimistic rhetoric, or the press's skepticism about it. What was wrong, exactly, with using language to inspire a crowd to vote, to care about their civil liberties? Talking about policy details wouldn't get them to the polls. Inspiring them would. On my right, a young black man screamed when Obama entered the amphitheatre, and he rushed over to greet him; he came back pumping his fist and saying, "He shook my hand!" I'd expected such latter-day Beatlemania, but two things surprised me: First, the excitement wasn't based on gender in the way I'd come to expect. (If anything, the guys seemed more excited than the ladies.) Second, the energy was far more sober than the reports of Obama fever had led me to believe.

I've been living in Texas for two months, mostly in Marfa, a small town in the western part of the state where ranchers and artists happily coexist; over the past weeks, I've driven across Texas talking in a casual way with people about what they think of the Democratic primary taking place tomorrow. Nearly everyone I've spoken to has said they believe Obama will win. In Austin, a trendy store not far from the University of Texas was selling "Barack Obama is Good!" T-shirts. A few in the women's large size were left, but the men's had nearly sold out. On a plane from Houston to Austin, I talked to an ex-Navy diver who was planning to vote for McCain: He hoped that Hillary would win the primary, but thought it unlikely, because Obama had seized the imagination of so many voters. ("What do you think he really believes?" he asked me. "I can't tell.)

Meanwhile, a middle-aged gas station attendant in the small town of Brady reluctantly exposed his feelings about Hillary. "She scares me like the devil," he said, slowly. A Republican, he didn't like talking about his politics to anyone, he said, and then added that he thought that the "Osama—Osama Bin Laden" fellow had some good ideas: for example, about how CEOs shouldn't make in 10 minutes what workers make in a year (a line from Obama's stump speech). The most striking thing to me—a lifetime New Englander—is just how independent-minded Texas voters see themselves as being. It's a live-and-let-live attitude that extends from coffee to politics. ("I don't listen to the radio. I don't read the newspapers. I don't watch TV," a man in a coffee shop in San Angelo told me.)

VIEW AS SINGLE PAGE
Print This ArticlePRINTDiscuss this in The FrayDISCUSSEmail to a FriendE-MAIL
Share on FacebookPost to MySpace!Share with MixxDigg ThisShare with RedditShare with del.icio.usShare with FurlShare with Ma.gnolia.comShare with SphereShare with Stumble Upon
Meghan O'Rourke is Slate's literary editor and the author of Halflife, a collection of poetry.
Photograph of Obama rally by Ben Sklar/Getty Images.
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum
What did you think of this article?
POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES