The former United Nations Secretary-General Boutrose Boutrose-Ghali once said that "only stupid people don't change their minds." Should Mr. Boutrose-Ghali be correct, I'm rather brilliant.

I started off as a supporter of Barack Obama, never having really liked Hillary Clinton as a First Lady or a New York Senator. Like many, her position on the war bothered me, her seeming coldness bothered me, her matronly appearance too; meanwhile Barack Obama seemed new and different, an orator with a passion that hadn't existed on a world stage for forty years was now standing before us crying out for those keystone dreams of hope and change.

I'm fickle though: those speeches of hope and change started boring me, and curiosity began bubbling in my skull over Hillary Clinton. Her absolute insistence and ardent belief in her own experience above any other started drilling a hole in my brain and finally a light-bulb went off that, by Jove, she was right! Enough with all the inexperienced people sitting atop ivory pedestals on our Capitol Hill--we need someone who knows what the hell they're doing! So I supported her.

But then came a panicked thought: neither a black man nor a woman can win against a white Christian male; we'll have another awful Republican! So I began to support John Edwards.

On and on this silly dance went, until Edwards was kind enough to drop out. And now a rapid fire quick-step took to the ballroom floor until my neck started hurting from craning back and forth and I finally relented, I put my foot down, I made a choice and proclaimed to myself and to my friends, "I support Hillary!" I gave my reason as thus: Hillary is a realist, Obama is an idealist; before we can reach our ideals, we must face our realities.

"My friends screamed at me."

I'm 27 years old and it seemed that I was the only one of my generation who had not been swept up in Obama. As Vernon Jordan put it so eloquently in referring to Clinton's campaign, "It's very hard to run against a movement." And suddenly I was against the movement. I was a NARC. I was the Ohio National Guard firing at the flower children of Kent State. I was the Arkansas National Guard blockading Little Rock High School. I was standing in the way of progress by voting for a woman!

Now I was torn once more. My generation finally had a movement! Our mutual hatred of George W. Bush didn't give us unity! Our mutual disgust at the Iraq War didn't give us unity! But Barack Obama has given us unity! So, do I stand with my personal beliefs or stand with a movement?

My hand lingered for a moment in confused deliberation inside the voting booth. When it came down on the ballot, it landed on Obama. I handed over my ballot and my choice had been made. But why then, why did I feel so guilty? I'd succumbed to peer pressure. Peer pressure never made me want to drink or smoke cigarettes or do drugs (those were my own choices, utilised at times of my own choosing); but peer pressure made me vote for Barack Obama. And as much as I like Barack Obama, I'm rather disgusted at myself.

But I'm none too pleased with my generation either, they're too quick to take up Obama and pass judgement on Hillary Clinton as the "establishment." I read a piece yesterday--after I voted--by a woman called Robin Morgan who wrote "If it's only about ringing rhetoric, let speechwriters run." The ability for a movement to catch lies in the rhetoric. We should have been mobilised years ago, but we lacked the rhetoric. Barack Obama has given us the rhetoric, but will he give us the movement?

"WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR AMERICAN DREAM??"
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But an even deeper question is, what is the movement? Ending the war? Both Hillary and Obama have vowed to give us that. Ending the insane politics of George W. Bush? Even John McCain offers us that. What is it that we want? Inspiration, I hear people say. Inspiration to do what? To be proud of our country? Both a white woman and a black man can give us that. To end all wrongs in the country? That's arguably impossible. Or is it just that we all long to be better people deep inside and Barack Obama makes us feel that way? That the sinful United States can repent for eight years of misery and three hundred years of injustice? I argue that that's not a movement, it's an apology. And apologising for our wrongs by voting for the inexperienced Barack Obama doesn't move us forward. It doesn't give us health care, it doesn't give us a higher education for the underprivileged, it doesn't quell our enemies, it doesn't fix the environment, it doesn't bring peace to the Middle East, it doesn't disband nuclear weapons, it doesn't solve injustice. It makes us feel better. But maybe that's something we need. And maybe that's why we like him. But maybe, just maybe, that's not a movement.

But hopefully the experience with Obama leaves us with something: the feeling of a unified generation. The feeling that the next time we need to take up a cause, we will. We just need to find out what that cause is. Because right now the only cause is Barack Obama himself.