Several passages in Audacity of Hope taken together might suggest Barack Obama's susceptibility to arguments for DC statehood. Chapter 8 on The World Beyond Our Borders is a good piece of philosophy on USofA's needed overhaul of its foreign policy. It relates, trust me!

Everywhere he has a reference to what people in countries without democracy must feel and how they suffer and want freedom, one can substitute DC residents in the text and make the same conclusions. Yet, he never once mentions the District plantation as part of the internal fracture in this country's government. 

He says US should be showing responsibility and setting the high road example for other nations to follow.

He writes that going the low road deprives US foreign policy of legitimacy and national and international respect. Having such legitimacy and respect would afford what the military in the field calls a "force multiplier."  Not having it makes them do stupid stuff.

On page 317 he says one of the most needed and basic freedoms wanted by everyone in the oppressed world is NOT the voting rights that come so quickly with our exported democracies, but freedom from corrupt or arbitrary power. For them voting in an election is at best a starting point toward, not a "deliverance" to democracy and freedom.

Anywhere on page 321 he could have listed DC statehood with the other important policy re-work that should be accomplished to clean our backyard. Doing these things he says would show good faith and leadership and demonstrate that this country is willing to make the same difficult changes that its government's foreign policy compels other countries to undergo.

Can he have this conversation and use his examples and sentiments, without seeing that DC is also a prime candidate for major progressive change?  He needs to make a pledge to return democracy and statehood to the District's residents during his term as president and work for it if he continues to be a senator.

DC democracy activists and others who should become active please note that Mr. Obama says, "There are few examples in history in which the freedom men and women crave is delivered through outside intervention."  The democracy achieved by successful movements like Gandhi's campaign and Solidarity in Poland (along with almost every other struggle), "was the result of a local awakening."

Malcolm Wiseman
Petworth County
State of Potomac
Free DC!