The Speech
Having watched the speech, I believe that even considering my clear bias toward the candidate, it is safe to say that he hit this one out of the park. There are perhaps no singular, memorable lines that will make the clip reel of great speeches, but the speech overall is as masterful as one expects from Obama’s rhetoric.
If you look at this speech, it embodies so much of what is good about Obama. At a time when many politicians would simply being doing damage control, Obama took this challenge and made it into an opportunity to address a larger issue of greater importance. He spoke in a healing manner about an issue which is as conspicuously divisive as it is covertly pervasive; instead of pretending that race is no longer a problem as pipe-dreaming conservatives often do (and as their very reaction to the Obama candidacy so thoroughly disproves), he confronted the issue head-on.
Instead of simply giving bland, feel-good platitudes that might comfort everyone in their falsehood and fantasize that problems don’t exist, he told all audiences, particularly blacks and whites, that we all have problems, we all make misjudgments. Obama has been known to tell you what you should hear instead of what you want to hear, and this was one such instance. Compare this with Bush’s “color blind” America, and Obama towers a hundred feet tall above that small sham of pretense. He would risk being honest where politicians usually run to the safe cover of make-believe utopia.
And that’s another positive here: Obama took a real risk here. Were this speech to fall flat, Obama could have hurt his campaign very badly, perhaps even putting his whole candidacy in jeopardy. This was not something long-planned, it was a real-time reaction, and Obama reacted perfectly. And he did it in a way that did not rely on sound bites, a very real risk; what he said could not be contained in small snippets, it has to be heard in length to be fully appreciated. This gives fuel to his detractors who can easily cut and dismember his speech so as to give a wrongful context (as I saw more than once on CNN today, for example). Instead of reducing the message to deformed ten-word sound bites, he laid it out in full, in a 37-minute speech, banking on the ability of Americans to take in more than the pundits care to dish out.
But most of all, the speech demonstrated Obama’s premiere talent: to take a divisive, controversial issue, contextualize it in a very real way at its core principles, recognize with full respect all the different views and perspectives, and lead his audience along the same path of logic and realization that he has traveled, bringing them all together to a common conclusion. That he does not demagogue or partisanize, that he does not take sides but instead respects all views, is the evidence of his ability to unify. This is not a man who would take such petty partisan digs like Bush or McCain when they call the Democratic Party the “Democrat Party,” to cite a small and spite-filled example. That’s why Obama in his worst hour stands so tall above those partisan hacks even at their best: he reaches out, and does not belittle. He respects, listens, and takes opposing viewpoints seriously. This passage highlights this ability clearly:
In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
This is a man who can see how people who might disagree with him think and feel. He can understand their resentments and their viewpoints, and can fold them into his argument and make those people feel accepted instead of threatened, so they can then take in the other viewpoints which might otherwise be overlooked. This is not a man who would ever say anything so dumbly dogmatic or arrogant as “You’re either with us or you’re against us.”
Obama was in good form today; I want to say it was his best, but if you watch him enough, you’ll see that this is simply how he is, this is what he does so naturally. That’s why the crowds adore him–not because he’s black, and not even because he can use the right twist of a phrase. It’s the package deal–honesty, integrity, humility, understanding, acceptance, unity, strength, strategy, and perhaps even wisdom. Give me that over a few years’ more experience any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.
“Sunday” being an operative word here; one benefit to this “scandal” and to Obama’s speech is the fact that even his critics are saying he’s a Christian now. They can’t have it both ways, insinuating that he’s a Muslim (as if that would be a horrible thing) and at the same time attacking him for his 20-year relationship with his Christian pastor, his unwillingness to distance himself from his Christian church.
Nor did Obama throw his pastor to the wolves; while he repeatedly conceded that the man said things that offended even him, he placed the words in a brilliantly honest context. He did not try to paint Wright as a perfect man, but as a man with all the good and the bad that people will have, and did so in a way that I am sure so many can understand. One of the best passages of so many good passages from his speech makes it so humanly clear:
Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way.But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS. …
Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
This crystallized Obama’s reasons perfectly for me: sometimes people you love say things you disagree with, things that might even make you cringe; but you don’t discard them because of such things, because you know that they are good people, people you have grown to love and respect over your life, people whose goodness and heart you have come to know. And despite the critics’ hollow charges that he “threw his grandmother under the bus” by comparing her to Wright, what Obama did was so much more different: he humanized her, like he humanized Wright. He told a story which, while painful, gave clarity and understanding, and most importantly, the impact of truth to a situation now saturated with distortion and slander.
Andrew Sullivan put it very well:
I have never felt more convinced that this man’s candidacy – not this man, his candidacy – and what he can bring us to achieve – is an historic opportunity. This was a testing; and he did not merely pass it by uttering safe bromides. He addressed the intimate, painful love he has for an imperfect and sometimes embittered man. And how that love enables him to see that man’s faults and pain as well as his promise. This is what my faith is about. It is what the Gospels are about. This is a candidate who does not merely speak as a Christian. He acts like a Christian.Bill Clinton once said that everything bad in America can be rectified by what is good in America. He was right – and Obama takes that to a new level. And does it with the deepest darkest wound in this country’s history.
Obama did something significant here. He demonstrated a trait that is supposed to be the epitome of Christian: forgiveness. He forgave Wright, and in a way, forgave the country where Wright damned it. This is what we need right now. All we have to do is weather the talking heads and hope enough TV stations see fit to put more than just the sound bites up so that more people can hear the message over the noise.
I haven’t had a chance to watch the speech yet but I did notice Mike Huckabee’s reaction to it, which is pretty cool: http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/3/19/72716/0494/229/479797
This speech was perhaps the most profound political speech since Lincoln (if one considers Martin Luther King as non-political). There are plenty of speeches that can come in right behind it: Kennedy’s inaugural address, Roosevelt’s inaugural address, Kennedy’s speech on his Catholicism were all in this class. Perhaps Roosevelt’s was more important, but probably not profound. The depression a pressing thing, but racism is centuries old in the United States, and is currently progressing very slow, if not moving backwards thanks to the conservative tide. Suddenly, out of nowhere, there is new hope for a real step forward on that front.
Lots of people are calling the speech courageous. Personally I don’t see it that way. For a person of pedestrian competence, or less, it would take great courage to give such a speech, but to a person of greater than average competence, in the field of civics, not just politics, this speech was not that risky. I make a distinction between average competence and above because all we’ve had for the last 40 years is average, and civics, because I see it as different than mere politics. Bush, Hillary and McCain are all above average in competence in politics. But in Civics, they are average at best, and Bush is in the gutter. But Obama has above average competence in civics, politics, rhetoric and so I don’t think his speech was that risky. Also, the options available to him, given the things that were getting air play concerning Rev. Wright, makes the speech less of a risky move in the sense that almost any other move would have been nearly as risky. So I don’t think it was a courageous speech as much as I think he demonstrated a high level of competence. Also he demonstrated an acute insight into views on both sides of the racial divide. As some have suggested, Obama is a great listener. He made a case for blacks and whites – which was simply brilliant, and perhaps we would have heard a long time ago if we had any competent statesmen lying around.
My take on the Rev. Wright’s statements are that, had he been a Jewish Rabbi, or a Catholic Priest, speaking out in the manner of an old curmudgeon, against the historical atrocities of the Jews or the Irish (my tribe), such vitriolic chauvinistic statements would be largely dismissed as just those of an old curmudgeon. Most white Americans are familiar and sympathetic with the travesty of Irish and Jewish peoples history, and so are tolerant of vitriolic chauvinistic statements that occasionally emanate from those quarters. (And, I thing the grevainces that impelled Wright are real enough: the Federal Government was still experimenting upon black men with syphilis in Tuskegee as recently as 1972, never mind the constitutions historical acceptance of slavery). But Wright is neither Irish nor Jewish. He’s black.
Within some white people, even people you wouldn’t ordinarily take for being racist, still lies a deep seated fear of subversive blacks threatening to overthrow the plantation and end civilization as we, or at least Scarlett O’Hara, have known it in the Western Hemisphere -as if some modern day Toussaint Louverture might come to life and turn the United States into Haiti. This is something that has largely been forgotten, and buried along with some of the images of the 1960s. If you haven’t a racist bone in your body, none of this resonates in you when you see Wright’s antics – you think he’s just an old vitriolic curmudgeon with an ax to grind, perhaps legitimately so, but nothing to take seriously. But if you have Toussaint Louverture fear syndrome, then Wrights statements resonate deeply and you might look at Obama and wonder if he might turn the United States into an enlarged failed state like Haiti. This is racism at its least cognitive and most emotional state. Both the mortals that would play the tape of Wright over and over again, and the those that react to it with negative emotion, are in fact wearing their racism on their sleeve as if it were a scarlet letter.
There are some on the right that these videos will harden their hearts into concrete. There are some in the middle that these videos will move them over into the far right. That was something that Obama had to deal with when he made the speech – which is another reason why the speech in my mind was not so much courageous, as it was just plain necessary. A square hole emerged, and for once we had a politician who was competent enough to put a square peg into it – whereas until now all we had were politicians competent enough not to try to put a round peg into the square hole.
But the speech was simply accurate and brilliant. It’s one thing to preach the idea of bringing people together, it’s another thing to be able to do it – and the fact that Obama could articulate the feelings and thoughts of both whites and blacks on both sides of the line was just something no one has been able to do, and perhaps no one else could do. Obama’s personal inheritance is unique: He’s half black and half white; his black side does not descend through slavery, he was raised by a white mother and grandmother in Hawaii and Indonesia and Kansas. Hawaii is perhaps the most integrated place on the planet, and certainly in the United States, and the only state where white Americans are not the majority. So Obama, growing up, largely hasn’t inherited alot of the negative messages and prejudices that the typical black American has – so his resentment and his anger, such that they may be, is of a different order. My own mother said to me, he has entirely different body language from most African Americans. Growing up in the white world, he saw and learned the white perspective. As an adult, though, he becomes a black person and gets assumes their perspective as well. So unique to Obama both these sides come together in a way that neither side could ever hope to bring. How many black people are raised by whites in a place like Hawaii, who then also have great intelligence, skill and competence in politics, civics, oratory and statesmenship – of any level, let alone Obama’s? Truly he’s a unique gift to the American society, if it can be realized.
Obama did not want to become the ‘black’ or racial candidate. But Wrights statements forced him to become that. But he’ turned that into an opportunity by elevating the issue. Again, this is a demonstration of above average competence. You can only do this if you know what you’re doing, but if you do know what you are doing, it is, perhaps, not quite so remarkable.
If Obama makes it into office, he’ll have a lot on his plate: Iraq, Pakistan, Iran, Islamic extremism, Isreal/Palestine, Peak Oil, Economic Meltdown, Declining Prestige, Healthcare, and now, Racial issues. Yet, amazingly, and perhaps uniquely, he’s extremely well suited to handle these thorny issues, and perhaps quite easily.
The right + the Clintons, are going to try to point at Wright, and point out that Obama is just an ordinary human, that he’s just another politician, as Bill Kristol recently attempted to do in the New York times. Time and again thost attempts fail, and often to reverse affect. Lincoln, Roosevelt, these people too were just human beings, and just politicians. But in fact, what we are seeing in Obama is an extraordinary political prodigy. The right and the Clintons face their own risks, of being the historical Hoover’s to Obama’s Roosevelt, but on a worse order.
I have to confess, I was, and to some extent am an Edwards man: my politics are impelled by slightly left of center economics. When I saw Obama’s speech in 2004, it became immediately obvious that he was a prodigy, but I thought, if only he had come a little earlier, and then, even with candidacy, I was driven by cyncism of politics, I saw Edwards as a safer bet against McCain, and still do, Bill Clinton is right, their are risks associated with the Obama campaign, but the rewards are there too, and the potential that was hinted at in 2004 has manifested itself monumentally in 2008. Obama could blow the doors wide open for the Democrats.
Rodney Dangerfield said that if you wanted to look skinny, stand next to someone fatter than you. People well schooled in history know that great times call forth great men. One of the things that tantalizes me, is the schadenfreude of the Bush abysmal being sandwiched in, for all history, between a spectacular Bill Clinton presidency (near 50% economic growth, budget surpluses, peace and prestige) and what promises to be a monumental Obama presidency. The abysmal crater Bush presidency almost assures us that the next President will be a great one, given the problems he’s created, thus creating immense potential for someone of such immense promise as Obama.
The crater of the Bush presidency will also discredit the movements he represents: movement conservativism and Neoconservativism. That would be a good and great thing, for our country and the world. Conservatives know what they are up against. Compare Roosevelt to Truman. They both had roughly the same policies goals, but Roosevelt passed lots of liberal legislation while Truman had to deal with shrinking popularity. All the charismatic liberal leaders of the 1960s, for what ever reason, were gunned down. Perhaps this explains the lack of competency in our political leaders when it comes time for statesmenship and pure civic virtues. For these reasons, I hope that Obama is wearing bullit proof underwear. No doubt in my mind, there are still three-named, Lee-Harvey-Somebody losers out there thinking of ways they might be able to make a name of themselves. (That’s another African American fear that’s not to often talked about in mixed company).
Beyond all that, Obama’s detractors are in danger of becoming the viewed as the kind of people who spited MLK. Because of their intrinsic cynicisms, they couldn’t recognize that fact that the person in their mist, was the bone fide real deal. Here’s typing a hat to hope.
One other point I meant to make, is the reaction of the populace to the speach, particularly white people. This is critical, and I suppose part of the risk involved, but again, I believe the risk emerged with Rev. Wright, not with the speech. If people see the entire speech, or the bulk of the speech I think it will propel Obama forward. No doubt Clinton has a growing recognition that perhaps she’s the one up against a giant, not he.
I think, like Obama himself, white people prefer not to have to deal with the race issue, today – tomorrow okay, but not today. But I also think White people want to move the racial issue forward – I think deep down inside, even people who don’t have any affinity towards blacks, wish to move the racial issue forward. If they give Obama’s speech a fair listening too, I think they will realize, that suddenly they have an opportunity to, a once in a life time opportunity, to move the issue forward on several levels. And I think the speech will demonstrate other traits that they will find Obama compelling. But the counter to this will be the constant airing of Wright. The Republicans only hope is that Toussaint Louverture fear syndrome (TLFS) will overcome people’s intellect at the emotional level – and many people will be effected by this. It will be interesting to see, on balance, the effect of all this over the next few weeks.
In general, I think it will be positive. But right now I’m not in the United States, and I don’t have a grasp on how the mostly conservative friends I have have reacted to this hole episode. It could very well be that they never got past Wright, or ever gave the speech a fair listening too. I imagine that Fox news rarely if ever airs the important parts of the speech, only the Rev. Wright stuff. Working people are busy, many may never get a chance to see Obama’s speech to full effect. If they do, it should be good, if they don’t well, then it will be bad for Obama (again, which is why he had to make the speech that he made).
The conservatives are parroting the talking points from Fox News. “He just said what he had to say”, “there’s no meat to his rhetoric, just flowery language” and so forth.
It’s depressing to see, because I always challenge them straight up with “tell you what- watch the speech, the WHOLE speech, yourself, and then decide for yourself.” And they don’t, because they already know what they think and what they believe and what they would expect to see.
Ignore the right wing- instead, compete enthusiastically and vigorously for the middle. Challenge them. Get THEM to watch the speech.