Opinion: Obama seizes moment, elevates debate with speech
As he grappled with the racial divide that lingers in America, Sen. Barack Obama’s speech this week became a tour de force that demonstrated the extraordinary depth of a man who understands the stark realities of this country, and is ready to seize his moment to change its direction for the better.
Fear is the disease that infects American politics, and apathy is its symptom. The eloquence and moral clarity of Obama’s speech Tuesday morning – one he wrote himself – was the best evidence yet that he’s got the remedy.
Obama raised the bar, for himself, and for American politics. He delivered the kind of speech that makes people believe in government; the kind of speech that leaves fear-mongering politicians looking like the charlatans they are, even though he said nary about them.
Seeking to dissipate anger over inflammatory statements by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., he urged whites to understand the source of the anger behind Wright’s remarks, and sought to explain whites’ racial resentment to blacks.
"For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away, nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years," Obama said. "That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends, but it does find voice in the barbershop or the beauty shop or around the kitchen table."
"In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community," he said. "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."
Until Tuesday, Obama, the so-called post-partisan, was a bit of an enigma – a question mark, packed with promise waiting to be fulfilled.
It was four years ago that he burst onto the national political scene with an inspiring speech at the Democratic National Convention in support of Sen. John Kerry, then the Democratic presidential nominee.
That same year, "swiftboating" became a verb permanently etched in our political lexicon. It describes trashy political attacks that are at best loosely based on truth. It describes a style of politics favoring soundbites over substance. It describes the attacks on Obama that have come from Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign – such as when she said she and presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain had "crossed the commander-in-chief threshold," but that Obama had not.
Well, Obama now has certainly crossed the swiftboat threshold.
Politicians in the past have lived in fear and attempted to weather the storm caused by controversies like Obama’s former pastor’s insensitive remarks. People like our own senator, Evan Bayh, and like Clinton, studiously say nothing in their fruitless attempts to remain a moving target, never leaving themselves open to Karl Rove-style swiftboating attacks. Or, they’ve tried to out-Rove Karl Rove – with equally disastrous results. That leaves people turned off politics, as they try to decide which candidate is the lesser of two evils.
Obama’s speech was honest, and it was bold. He stood up to a corrupt and divisive political culture and he refused to run scared.
At a time when almost any other politician would have played it safe, Obama chose to use the opportunity to raise the level of debate in this country. He proved that wearing your integrity on your sleeve is the best immunity to the diseased politics of recent years.
Tuesday morning, Obama became unstoppable.
He raised the bar to a height far too few politicians even seem interested in meeting. He delivered a speech unlike any politician has delivered, at least since John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech on religion.
To make a speech like Obama did, it takes an audacity that can only give us hope.
