The Speech

OK, it's been a day since the Obama race speech. I've really been trying to absorb every angle of this thing to see how it plays out. I watched it on TV, printed it, and read through it a couple of times. First and foremost, this is rhetoric that is best absorbed through careful reading (always a hazard when trying to inform the American public). Having watched and listened to it, I have gained so much more from careful study and reflection that comes from reading the words on paper (or screen). It was a masterpiece, start to finish. It's power comes from it's restrained tone - there was no pandering here, no hysterics, no singling out specific demographics for the purpose of shoring up a base constituency. It was subdued, and the more I read it the more I hear a tone of almost despair. This sadness probably comes from the fact that Obama had to make the speech in the first place. His candidacy has been based on the assumption that Americans had moved beyond seeing through a stale black/white lens and would gladly choose as their leader someone who offered the country a real movement towards change, regardless of color. This message (not his color, contrary to what Geraldine Ferraro said) explains the power and popularity of the Obama campaign. So there was a sadness in his words, part of which was a reflection on the 200+ years of racial injustice and an acknowledgment that blacks are not the only people to have suffered as a result of these policies. Our efforts to address the racial imbalance have created a corresponding resentment among white Americans and immigrants, who are not recipients of the fruits of affirmative action. Such policies breed additional distrust and resentments. His words were a wonderful and spellbinding discourse on the lasting legacy of our national sin. Slavery, Jim Crow, and Northern equivalents of Jim Crow have warped the fabric of reality for everyone in America.
It was also a brilliant and very risky gamble to take the high road. He could have easily just dismissed, denounced, and disassociated himself from Pastor Wright. That would have been easy. It wouldn't have completely put the controversy to bed, but it would have gone a long way towards it. Instead, he chose to rise up above the controversy and in doing so fully displayed all of the qualities that have drawn millions to him. It was a moment worthy of the best leaders in American history, and I believe it was the strongest demonstration yet of why he's the best person to lead our country.

So overall, I agree with Chris Matthews who maybe went a little cuckoo on the hyperbole when describing the speech. On Hardball the day of the speech he said that schoolchildren and college students would be studying and reading the speech well into the future. There are additional layers of nuance and new things to admire on each reading. The remarkable thing about this speech is that it came in the middle of the campaign season, not usually a time for candor. It's also pretty remarkable that he wrote the speech himself, without the use of traditional speechwriters. In the middle of 18 hour campaign schedules, he wrote (on 2-3 days notice) a speech that's destined to be one of the most important in American history? Who else in modern American political life can say that?

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