Obama’s Speech

I admire all three of the remaining candidates for president of the United States. And I think all three have done at least a fair job of discussing the issues confronting the country. Sen. John McCain has at times been honest and thoughtful in his speeches. Sen. Hillary Clinton has done a good job at talking about issues that matter to average Americans.

But I have never seen a major candidate for President of the United States speak with as much honesty, insight, and courage as did Sen. Barack Obama yesterday in Philadelphia. In discussing the issue of race in this country, Obama took on an explosive issue and yet refused to pander, to equivocate, to soft-pedal the way so many other politicians would have. It is true he was forced into this speech by the comments of his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But he addressed the issue head-on, in a personal and searingly honest way, at a huge risk to his campaign.

If that doesn’t define leadership, I don’t know what does.

I could go on, but as it happens so many times in my observing the political world, many have said what I would say and done a much better job. So I’m just going to share some of the reaction I’ve found, from a variety of sources and viewpoints. Some of this I agree with, some I don’t, but all of it is part of an important discussion that we have avoided for too long.

This country is a better place because of the words Barack Obama spoke yesterday.

The speech.

The Reaction:

David Brody, a blogger with the Christian Broadcast Network, which is affiliated with Pat Robertson’s 700 Club (a show that is no stranger to controversy), posted some very good comments on the speech. Also on the same page, see the comments of Robin Mazyck, Brody’s producer, for more insight on Rev. Wright.

Some quotes: “One of the big concerns people had was that Obama was making it sound like he had no idea that his pastor was controversial—like Obama was living in some sort of bubble. But in this speech, Obama was clear that he knew about "stuff" that his pastor was saying. It was a raw moment. We'll see if it comes back to bite him. I think him coming clean about it has more upside than to deny the obvious.

The speech was so sweeping as he talked so much about what divides this country. He was able to shine a light on the racism that existed and still exists in America, but he was able to do it in a way that didn't seem condemning. By confronting the anxieties in both the white and black communities, he was able to get in the weeds a little bit and tell it like it is. Anytime a politician is being "candid" with their audience, it's a good day. Obama had a good day.

…

Did he go far enough in distancing himself from Pastor Wright in this speech? There will be those who say he had to be stronger in his language. I'm not so sure. Look, the guy defended his pastor who has done a lot for the community but he also chastised him numerous times too. What do we want to do here? Have Obama bring out a dart board complete with a picture of Wright and have Obama start throwing darts at the bulls eye?”

Here’s Mike Huckabee’s take on it:

“HUCKABEE: [Obama] made the point, and I think it's a valid one, that you can't hold the candidate responsible for everything that people around him may say or do. You just can't. Whether it's me, whether it's Obama...anybody else. But he did distance himself from the very vitriolic statements.

Now, the second story. It's interesting to me that there are some people on the left who are having to be very uncomfortable with what Louis Wright said, when they all were all over a Jerry Falwell, or anyone on the right who said things that they found very awkward and uncomfortable years ago. Many times those were statements lifted out of the context of a larger sermon. Sermons, after all, are rarely written word for word by pastors like Reverend Wright, who are delivering them extemporaneously, and caught up in the emotion of the moment. There are things that sometimes get said, that if you put them on paper and looked at them in print, you'd say "Well, I didn't mean to say it quite like that." 



JOE SCARBOROUGH: But, but, you never came close to saying five days after September 11th, that America deserved what it got. Or that the American government invented AIDs...

HUCKABEE: Not defending his statements.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Oh, I know you're not. I know you're not. I'm just wondering though, for a lot of people...Would you not guess that there are a lot of Independent voters in Arkansas that vote for Democrats sometimes, and vote for Republicans sometimes, that are sitting here wondering how Barack Obama's spiritual mentor would call the United States the USKKK?

HUCKABEE: I mean, those were outrageous statements, and nobody can defend the content of them.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: But what's the impact on voters in Arkansas? Swing voters.

HUCKABEE: I don't think we know. If this were October, I think it would have a dramatic impact. But it's not October. It's March. And I don't believe that by the time we get to October, this is gonna be the defining issue of the campaign, and the reason that people vote.

And one other thing I think we've gotta remember. As easy as it is for those of us who are white, to look back and say "That's a terrible statement!"...I grew up in a very segregated south. And I think that you have to cut some slack -- and I'm gonna be probably the only Conservative in America who's gonna say something like this, but I'm just tellin' you -- we've gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told "you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can't sit out there with everyone else. There's a separate waiting room in the doctor's office. Here's where you sit on the bus..." And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.

MIKA: I agree with that. I really do.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: It's the Atticus Finch line about walking a mile in somebody else's shoes. I remember when Ronald Reagan got shot in 1981. There were some black students in my school that started applauding and said they hoped that he died. And you just sat there and of course you were angry at first, and then you walked out and started scratching your head going "boy, there is some deep resentment there."

TIME magazine’s James Carney:
“Obama did what politicians so rarely do — acknowledge complexity, insist that the issue currently roiling the presidential campaign — the story of Jeremiah Wright's words — is not a story that is clear-cut between right and wrong, or between black and white for that matter. Having waged a campaign, with great success, on the notion that race as a political and electoral issue could be transcended, with a strategy that assiduously downplayed race, Obama declared today that the only way to transcend race is to focus on it rather than downplay it — to acknowledge its sometimes oppressive presence in American life, in the form of both black anger and white alienation.

…

Obama's speech was profound, one of the most remarkable by a major public figure in decades. One question — perhaps the question —is whether its sheer audacity makes for good political strategy. By confronting the Wright controversy head-on, Obama ensured that it would drive the narrative about his campaign, and his race against Hillary Clinton, for days and perhaps weeks to come. He and his advisers no doubt calculated that nothing they could do would change that fact. But if one of the appeals of Obama's candidacy has been the promise of a post-racial politics, how will voters respond to a speech acknowledging that the future is not now, that race still divides us?

Obama is taking a substantial risk. He is counting on voters to hear and accept nuance in an arena that almost always seems to reward simplicity over complexity. He is asking something from Americans rather than just promising things to them — another formulation long out of vogue. ‘For we have a choice in this country,’ he said. ‘We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle — as we did in the O.J. trial — or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina, or as fodder for the nightly news ... We can do that,’ he goes on to say. ‘But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction ... And nothing will change.’”

This I found in the comments section of the The Fix, a campaign blog at the Washington Post.

“…We know from yesterday that when Barack Obama's chips are down, he confronts problems head on, with dignity, self-respect, and respect for others. We know from every one of his concession speeches, in which he first thanks Senator Clinton, that Senator Obama has respect for his opponents and this process, and therefore us.

Ignore the mountain everyone is making out of his molehill. They're picking on this silly issue because they have nothing else to glom onto. They couldn't get Rezko to stick. They couldn't get the "arrogance" claim to stick. They couldn't get the "it's just words" claim to stick.

So now they're feigning righteous indignation over this Pastor. The right-wing Evangelicals have several crazy uncles in the basement, each of whom preach as much vitriolic hate towards gays, people of color, immigrants illegal or otherwise, and so on. But every individual evangelical I've met, and most every evangelical politician I've met or watched on television seem to be of exceptional character. Am I supposed to believe that Senator Lindsay Graham is full of hatred and bigotry? How about Senator John McCain? How about Governor Haley Barbour? These are all men who have met on numerous occasions with the crazy uncles of the right wing, who have attended churches where pastors foment hatred towards gays, and yet whom I respect a great deal nonetheless.

Grow up, and start focusing on the real issues in this country: 3990 American soldiers dead in a war that should never have been fought, close to 20% of Americans without healthcare, rampant corporate malfeasance and declining shareholder accountability, a thorough lack of transparency into the machinations of our government.”

Conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan had this to say:
“… I cannot give a more considered response right now as I have to get on the road. But I do want to say that this searing, nuanced, gut-wrenching, loyal, and deeply, deeply Christian speech is the most honest speech on race in America in my adult lifetime. It is a speech we have all been waiting for for a generation. Its ability to embrace both the legitimate fears and resentments of whites and the understandable anger and dashed hopes of many blacks was, in my view, unique in recent American history.

And it was a reflection of faith - deep, hopeful, transcending faith in the promises of the Gospels. And it was about America - its unique promise, its historic purpose, and our duty to take up the burden to perfect this union - today, in our time, in our way.

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.”

Jay Cost of the conservative blog Real Clear Politics:

“As an argument as well as a campaign position, I find it to be subtle yet powerful, which is not to say that I am in full agreement with it. I think Obama offers a generally liberal interpretation of the Constitution and the Founding. I also think his prescriptions for the common good are plainly liberal. Accordingly, I think this unification will be harder to achieve than he is inclined to recognize. While most of us see the same "more perfect union" when we close our eyes, we are deeply divided over how to make the vision a reality. Obama's biography, personality, and Hamiltonian enthusiasm for unity will not alter what remains a simple Madisonian fact: power is divided and changes are hard to make. Still, I think these are reasonable, defensible opinions. Usually, we do not see this kind of sophistication in contemporary campaign rhetoric.”