The Speech

I did a piece on the content of Barack Obama's address on race in Philadelphia Tuesday here at Dreaming Up Daily, and the possible future response. I wanted to add a little about the immediate response and the politics here.

The response has been phenomenal. Even those who disagree on the political impact mostly agree that it was a landmark speech. Babe Buchanan and Rachel Madow agreed. Conservative and liberal Christian ministers agreed. Jon Stewart and former Clinton/GOP advisor David Gergen independently remarked that Obama talked to Americans as adults. (About the only person who didn't praise it was Hillary, who said she was too busy--grinding her teeth perhaps--to see or read it yet.)

Almost all of the bloggers at Huffington Post wrote about it, and virtually all lauded it. "Senator Barack Obama displayed a quality in his speech today that the Democratic Party desperately needs in its nominee in 2008: Fearlessness," began RFK biographer Joseph Palermo. He added later: Obama's honesty is like oxygen for our democracy, especially after years of the political farce we've had to endure...There was an audible echo of America's greatest leaders ringing throughout Obama's speech today. As a biographer of Robert F. Kennedy, I could not help but be struck by the similarity in sentiment Obama expressed. His courageousness and honesty reminded me of some of RFK's greatest speeches on race relations."

"Barack Obama spoke like an enlightened leader from 2008 instead of like the fake cowboy from 1885 that most politicians evoke or like a pharmaceutical salesman talking about change, but "not that much change" at a team building exercise in Tahoe," wrote Adam McKay. "In other words, he didn't pass the buck to save his own ass. It was a monumental moment in modern American politics. He didn't distract, deflect, or attempt to frighten. He didn't accuse, declare war, or get angry. He didn't game play, scape goat, or blame. Can you imagine? We need to engrave this shit onto a commemorative coin fast."

This morning's New York Times (whose editorial board endorsed Hillary before Super Tuesday) editorialized this, under the banner Mr. Obama's Profile in Courage: "Inaugural addresses by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt come to mind, as does John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech on religion, with its enduring vision of the separation between church and state. Senator Barack Obama, who has not faced such tests of character this year, faced one on Tuesday. It is hard to imagine how he could have handled it better."

Other effusive responses were collected by HuffPost here.

Over at Daily Kos, Obama partisans were ecstatic. One reproduced photos of audience members at the speech with tears in their eyes--including Michelle Obama, and commenters described their own tearful responses. Another described watching it at a suburban auto dealership with a range of strangers, all of whom were riveted and responded positively.

Then there was this posted on the Obama campaign site:

After today's speech, I got a call from my dad -- a retired, gun-owning Republican Vietnam veteran who still lives in the little broken down central PA town where I grew up. He happened to turn on the tv today and saw the speech. Immediately afterward he called me at work (which is unprecedented) to say that he was moved and had decided to give Obama $100. That's a lot of money for my dad.Today's speech was supposed to inspire people like me -- a liberal, thirtysomething lawyer, Philadelphia resident, and longstanding member of the Obama bandwagon -- but when it gets to my dad, you're really on to something. He's McCain's base.

But now everyone holds their breaths to see what the polls will say. At least one commentator on CNN felt that the endless re-running of Rev. Wright's most extreme moments on, among other channels, CNN, had doomed Obama beyond repair. But because the speech got so much attention and was so brilliant--and will be followed up Wednesday and Thursday by major addresses on Iraq and the economy-- there are three possibilities: the Wright impact, which has yet to show up negatively in any polls, will show up and will persist through polls taken after the speech, thus giving Hillary hope that super-delegates will decide Obama is unelectable and flock to her. 2.) The speech, which may have introduced Obama to many voters, will be so well received that it will essentially assure him the nomination. 3.) The whole controversy will turn out to have little impact.

Of course, there are gradations of those possibilities but my point really is that two out of the three are pretty good for Obama. If it had been a less well received speech in the media, there might be more chance that 1. will prevail. But now it's clear that nobody could have done better, and if the Civil War continues, it will only because a lot of people didn't recognize Lincoln when they heard him.