When I got home yesterday I turned on the TV and I saw Obama giving a live televised speech. After listening for a few seconds I realized that it was not his regular stump speech. Five minutes later I felt as if I was watching Bartlett give a speech on The West Wing (the TV show).
Finally, a politician who has enough faith in the people to throw everything out on the table. That is, in my opinion, what Obama did in this speech–which he himself wrote. While he sometimes ventures into the world of “politics as usual,” it’s moments like this–when Obama shares with us an intricate truth that any conventional politician would keep to themselves– which remind me that Obama belongs to a rare breed of “authentic” politicians.
Can you imagine Hillary Clinton giving such a speech? Or, how about Mitt Romney? His religion speech from earlier this year looks freakishly artificial and extremely political when compared to the one Obama gave yesterday.
“For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina – or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.”
(Originally posted on March 19, 2008)
