Obama responds

by: Jay Stevens

Tue Mar 18, 2008 at 12:19:50 PM MST

From the right, you do often see Democratic candidates assailed for their ideological impurity, their "thought crimes." Such a strain of attack has been common from the Republican party in recent years, and culminated in the 2006 election. Remember this  New York Times editorial?

Since he can't defend the real world created by his policies and his decisions, Mr. Bush is inventing a fantasy world in which to campaign on phony issues against fake enemies....

Remember George Allen's attack on Jim Webb for what he wrote in his novels? Me, then:

It was a crass attempt to balance allegations made against Allen -- that he used racial epithets, that he stuffed a deer's head into the mailbox of an African-American family, that he threw his brother through a sliding-glass door and dragged his sister up the stairs by her hair, that his staff assaulted a blogger -- allegations about Allen's actual misconduct. In other words, Allen presumed that his actions would be balanced by Webb's "thought crime," his imagined world.

Now the thought police are after Obama.

So Obama - doing the right thing - faced his critics head-on with his his speech, "A More Perfect Union." (See the video, too.) And it was a doozy, even by Obama's already lofty standards.  

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners - an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

Obama succinctly summed up the complexities of race in America, explained the anger felt by many who have been victim of racial, political, or economic injustices, and reminded us all that we have to work as a community. The solutions - or salves - to our problems of race, are the same solutions - or salves - for economic disparity:

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds - by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In short, it was exactly as Steve Benen described: "...it's the kind of speech politicians just don't give anymore - a brilliant address with context and nuance. It answered key questions, while challenging his audience with new ones." Yet...

Of course, our modern political landscape very rarely rewards context and nuance, brilliant or not, so whether Obama managed to help his campaign today remains to be seen. It's depressing, but Michael Crowley's point in response to the speech is important: "[It was] brilliant, beautiful, inspiring - but perhaps not what crass electoral politics demanded of him."