The Obama Half-Dollar

[Written in the summer of 2009]


I've been holding on to one particular coin for nearly a year now. Nothing rare or particularly exceptional about this coin but it has grown in personal value and I am reluctant to part with it. It is a 1984 Kennedy-face half-dollar. It has no real distinction except that it was a tip I received while tending bar one chilly night early in February of 2008. I should go back just a bit before I continue with this story.
I first became interested in Barack Obama as a serious Candidate for president after hearing his speech at the Democratic Nation Committee meeting in the fall of 2007. He made one remark that made an impression on me. He declared that "I am running in this race because of what Dr. King called 'the fierce urgency of now" His speech covered his remarkable and unlikely story, and his belief that a few voices can build and rise into many and finally into one unified voice.
At the time there were still 10 candidates running. Among those running was Obama's strongest opponent Hillary Clinton, his eventual running mate Joe Biden, and the former Senator from North Carolina and John Kerry's Vice Presidential nominee John Edwards. The others had name recognition and vastly more playing time in Washington, but it was clear that in this campaign washington experience would be a liability. People across the nation were itching for something new and were, for the first time in a while, looking beyond party affiliation, gender barriers and racial divides.
I was undecided. I knew that I wasn't going to vote for a Republican but I wasn't necessarily too keen on the Democrats. I wouldn't call myself a democrat nor any other label with such concrete implications attached to it. If I had to look at all of the parties this country has to offer (and there are more than 2) I would probably align closest with some form of a progressive party. In my four prior presidential elections I had Voted for Bill Clinton in 92, Ralph Nader in 96, Al Gore in 2000 and in 2004 I wrote in Howard Dean feeling that Kerry didn't have the political strength or personal charisma to affect real change in Washington.
It appeared Barack Obama was that instrument of change, the progressive voice that I, along with a multitude hungry for common sense, had been looking for. I became a supporter. For the next few months I would defend my support for Obama to my father and my friends who were Clinton supporters as well as to my good friend Patrick who was an Edwards Supporter. My reasons for not getting behind Hillary Clinton were simple. She was part of a political machine that had already had a go at the White house and though the eight years of Bill flanked between 2 Bush presidencies was like a quick gasp of air while having your head repeatedly dunked in a barrel of water, it was time for something fresh and new. I found it harder to come up with reason not to throw my support behind Edwards. Both he and Obama had similar backgrounds coming from working-class families and overcame considerable odds to put themselves through Law school. Both brought a similar grass-roots approach and anti-poverty message to there campaigns. But again, as good of an orator and as capable a statesman as Edwards was, he lacked the charisma and the dynamic personality to rally the people, to cross race and gender lines and to unite a nation divided. in my mind Obama was our only hope.
By the beginning of January 2008 Joe Biden had dropped out of the race along with Chris Dodd and Dennis Kucinich leaving Edwards to compete against two candidates with more historical significance than he. Edwards was now running a campaign that, if successful, would keep this nation from nominating either the first Woman or the first African-American for president. On January 30, 2008 John Edwards speaking from the ninth district in New Orleans, where he had began his campaign a year earlier, announced that he was dropping out of the race “so that history can blaze its path.”
Later that week I was Tending Bar at Mcneill's Brewery in Brattleboro Vermont. McNeill's is a local gathering place where unlike-minded people can feel free to exchange ideas and opinions without fear of judgement or prejudice. My Edward supporting friend Patrick was, on this day, getting his usual dose of peanuts and porter. He paid for his beverage and snack and laid down a single coin and said “Hold on to this until Obama is elected” It was the aforementioned Kennedy-face half-dollar.
It certainly was not the biggest tip I'd received in my time in the service industry but it had a particular weight that I didn't realize until after holding this coin for several weeks and subsequent months. I began to consider the implications that this coin carried with it. I, of course, thought of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, elected the year that Barack Obama was born. I thought of the Democratic party, once the party of slavery, that had become the beacon of civil rights one-hundred years after Abraham Lincoln removed one of the final stains of the American experiment by abolishing slavery and who maintain a union out of a nation divided and made it possible for a man of color to eventually assume the highest office in this nation.
I thought of the year, 1984. A year that saw the biggest electoral sweep in US history as Ronald Reagan defeated Walter Mondale, Mondale only carrying his home state of Minnesota and Washington DC. I also thought of the totalitarian nightmare that George Orwell wrote about in 1948, a path that our nation was dangerously close to realizing with the direction of the previous administration.
The coin has been with me since it left the bar top and conditionally entered my pocket. It has been part of my daily routine, keys, wallet, phone, Obama coin. Obama has since surpassed and defeated the Clinton political Machine to win the democratic nomination for president and he has defeated the McCain/Palin ticket to win the Presidency.
I held onto the coin as I made my voice heard in a private voting booth on November 4th . And as the polls closed and the results began to come in periodically reached into my pocket to make sure the coin was still there. Before midnight Obama had clinched the election by surpassing the 270 delegate mark. There was a roar of celebration around me that night, much larger than any game-winning home-run or Super Bowl touchdown.
The following day as I went about my usual morning routine there was something different. People were smiling at each other. Strangers were greeting one another and making eye contact. It was a togetherness I had not felt since the days following September 11, 2001 but with a noticeable polarity of emotion. People were coming together in hope rather than fear. A heaviness had been lifted and it seemed that American promise and our status among the nations of the world had been restored.
The coin has remained in my pocket. It hasn't been given up to make the difference to purchase a cup of coffee. It hasn't been broken into smaller coins to make change for parking. it's value has well surpassed the face value of the coin as it was printed in Philadelphia. It has been the most valuable fifty cents I'll never spent.