The Meaning of Obama's Last Rally: Reading Between The Lines

Manassas Park is a tiny dot on the US map, a tiny dot abutted to another city, also called Manassas. Manassas Park means nothing to someone living outside the US but “Manassas” means so much to the American collective psyche.

Its contemporary outlook of never-ending shopping malls, large highways and new mansionized neighborhoods tells a tale of American wealth, of the somewhat extravagant way of life of those who shop till they drop, of the last 40 years of monetarist policy’s slogan: “the bigger the better”.
Manassas Park lies northeast of Manassas “proper”. If taken back in time, the traveler would not be assaulted by the artificial neon lights of commercial adventures but stumble onto battlefields that saw two main military Southern victories of the Civil War (the Union called these battles the “Bull Run Battles”, from the name of the local rivulet).

When Barack Obama chose Virginia to wrap-up his presidential campaign and deliver his last pre-election speech, it was the deliberate, calculated and yet sensitive act of someone who not only knows but also understands History.

Although it seceded later than the 7 original Confederate States, Virginia was the State at the heart of the Confederacy, with Richmond its most permanent capital from 1861 to 1865 (Montgomery, Alabama was the first brief one and Danville, Virginia became its brief last one after the fall of Richmond). Virginia has known many battles during the Civil War; its soil has swallowed the blood of soldiers from both sides. Virginia is also the birthplace of many a “Founding Father”, whose estates have become pilgrimage destination trips to this day: Mount Vernon (George Washington’s); Monticello (Thomas Jefferson’s) and all the James River plantations (to name a few). The shadows of the American Revolution’s Great Men still haunt their grounds, their personal contradictions with regards to “all men are created equal” ( American Declaration of Independence, 1776), the burden they carried to their grave by lack of courage more than lack of conviction.

Put into such a perspective, Obama’s decision to hold his last speech in Manassas (even if only Manassas “Park”), Virginia, can be perceived as the race to win a traditionally Republican State leaning towards becoming a Swing State. But it is not only that. Beyond the fact that he himself is not the descendant of slaves, he chose a State in which the Confederate flag is still frequently and proudly displayed, at a location close to where the Northern armies (the Yankees, the abolitionists) lost two battles and thousands of brothers gave their life and their blood for opposite causes. Thus he reminded us of the absurdity of war, of civil war particularly, of the necessity of brotherhood beyond the barrier of color and history. Because he could have chosen any other “traditionally Republican leaning to becoming swing State” but he did not. He chose Virginia.