Chip Roberson: Elected delegate speaks out

“This is not old hat!”

Those were the words a gentleman, sitting a few seats away, spoke into my ear near the end of the evening Thursday night. Earlier that day we had met for the first time, and I discerned that he had been to a few conventions before. Between the mid-afternoon speeches that were warming up the audience, I had turned to him and suggested, “I guess this is old hat to you.” He just smiled politely like a grandfather who understood deeper and wiser things.

We never really exchanged names, just a little geographic information. By this point in the convention, everyone was a little tired and other people began to arrive so the conversation diverged. I didn’t really think too much about it as there was enough happening that my attention was drawn elsewhere.

Nearly 48 hours and one good night’s sleep later, I find myself still struggling to put Thursday night into a frame of reference that would allow me to articulate my experience. There are some events in a person’s life that are so out of the norm that it forces a recalculation of the barometer by which those events are measured.

The day Cisco bought our company, Cerent, was one of those, though it would take me years to finally realize just how much re-calibration would be required. I am starting to wonder if Thursday might also be one of those days. I guess time will tell.

The significance that the day Barack Obama was to accept the Democratic Party’s Presidential nomination was the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech was certainly not overlooked. Historically, there had been leaders of great inspiration, but in my 45 years on this earth I have not found one. I have often wondered if history embellishes the memory of great people.

As the time for Senator Obama’s speech came, I found my apprehension growing. The build-up to this night had been steep and the bar was high. What if he failed to deliver on the backs of so many superb speeches?

I will assume most of the readers of this blog heard the speech, so I will not echo its elements here. When the speech was over and everyone was standing — cheering with their “Change” posters held high and waiving the little American flags — it hit me.

Some months ago, I wrote a column in the local paper titled, “I Want My Country Back.” As Obama’s speech concluded, I realized that I finally had a leader who articulated my concerns and ideals and he was calling others to share them. At that very moment, I realized that the “chattering class” — as one journalist recently described the pundits on the mainstream media — had been missing the point.

With the revelation that we finally have a leader that gets “it,” but somehow the insular world of celebrity news had not, I turned to face the array of make-shift TV studios stationed behind me and held my “CHANGE” sign up high and defiantly. Silently, I screamed, “I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK!”

And the gentle old man — the one who leaned over to tell me “this is not old hat?” His full quotation was, “I was on the Mall 45 years ago this day. I was in Selma and in Riverside, too. This is not old hat!”