Barack Obama

Pete Seeger On Obama

I saw the wonderful PBS debut of “American Masters: Peter Seeger: The Power of Song” last night. If you like American folk music, and true American patriots, I highly recommend this show. If it weren’t for Pete Seeger, Alan Lomax, Woodie Guthrie, and the others that worked with them, we would have lost much American folk music that had not been notated and catalogued until they began work on a project to address that effort. As an American, and a musician, I will be forever grateful for their contribution to this effort to preserve American folk music.

I also came across a recent interview with Pete in the Rolling Stone which was quite interesting. He talks about some of his experiences with Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Lead Belly, and shares some thoughts about the current American political landscape and the presidential race. See what he had to say about Obama below.

What do you think of Obama?
I guess if I had my choice, he’d be the one. I would’ve liked Kucinich. However, what I am for is I.R.V. Most people don’t even know what it is: Instant Recount Voting. When you vote, you vote for your first choice, your second choice and your third choice. I went to a school where we had proportional voting and that’s the way we voted for the student council. If your favorite already made it onto the council, then your second choice counted.

So you’d vote first for someone like Dennis Kucinich first?
That’s right. And if he didn’t make it, I’d vote for Obama and if he didn’t make it, I’d vote for Hillary. If she didn’t make it, I’d vote for Huckabee. Huckabee is a good speaker! He’s the most radical speaker of any of them.

Do you think America is on the verge of leaving these dark times with the impending election?
I’m absolutely convinced that the extraordinary tradition in America of speaking your mind has saved us decade after decade after decade. Right now I’m more optimistic than I was after Hiroshima. I felt then that surely it would only be 20 or 30 years until another of those bombs would be dropped and if we weren’t killed, we’d be poisoned by the fallout.

So you think the pendulum is going to shift back after eight years of Bush?
Well, I describe it this way. You know, if you bounce a ball on the sidewalk, the harder you throw it down, the higher it bounces. So, we may have some very good things happening. But who knows? There could be dirty tricks still tried.

© 2008 Life is an Ongoing Process.