There were a lot of inspirational parts to Barack Obama’s speech, but he gave the speech to solve a political problem. And, on that front, I think his most effective rhetoric came in the following passage.
In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.
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.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.”
The reason I think this is effective is that does two important things. First, it appeals to our better angels and speaks the truth to us in a direct way. Second, it makes anyone that wants to harp on Rev. Wright for the remainder of the campaign seem small, petty, and stridently political. This won’t stop those that are unapologetically political, but it will exact a price on everyone else. I can say firsthand that the press buzz after the speech was positive. With the exception of a few assholes, the mainstream press is going to back off of the pastor story as a result of Obama’s speech. Fortunately for the quality of our public discourse, John McCain seems disinclined to pursue this line of attack.
HANNITY: He’s been — but he’s been going to the church for 20 years. His pastor — the church gave a lifetime achievement award to one of the biggest racists and anti-Semites in the country, Louis Farrakhan. Would you go to a church that — where your pastor supported Louis Farrakhan?
MCCAIN: Obviously, that would not be my choice. But I do know Sen. Obama. He does not share those views.
And we get sometimes — I don’t — a lot of those statements I’ve just heard for the first time that you mentioned. But I know that, for example, I’ve had endorsements of some people that I didn’t share their views…
HANNITY: Pastor Hagee recently, yes.
MCCAIN: … but they endorsed mine. And so I think we’ve got to be very careful about that part.
From a purely political point of view, then, I think the speech accomplished what it set out to do. I have noted that a lot of progressives are unhappy with the portion of the speech that dealt with Israel. That’s a legitimate criticism. However, after African-Americans, conservative Jews were the most noticeable members of the audience, and that is no accident. This was an invitation only speech, and it was aimed at allaying the fears of many in the Jewish community that Obama is a less than steadfast supporter of Israel. In fact, while I was chatting with Rep. Patrick Murphy we were interrupted by a couple that wanted to discuss that very subject. Several people mentioned the endorsement of Robert Wexler, which seems to be carrying a lot of weight (even in Israel).
Before people overreact to Obama’s pandering to the Israeli Lobby, read this:
“This is where I get to be honest, and I hope I’m not out of school here,” Obama told Jewish leaders at the private meeting. “I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering, pro-Likud approach to Israel that you’re anti-Israel, and that can’t be the measure of our friendship with Israel.”
Two things here. First, a presidential campaign is not the time to start redefining our relationship with Israel. Second, I count myself as a supporter of Israel that takes a very un-Likud approach to the difficulties there. I cringe when I hear politicians prostrate themselves before the Israel Lobby, but I also see it somewhat akin to professing a strong religious faith. You want to be president? Or don’t you? Obama has to reassure the Jewish community that he supports Israel, not that he agrees with the politics of Netanyahu and Sharon.
In any case, I think today’s speech could very well go down as one of the finest speeches in American history. And, it might not even depend on whether he wins the general election. It was that impressive.
Hillary has got to come up with something to counter that speech, or else she is going to be marginalized. I have no idea what it might be, however. That’s a tough act to follow.
How could she follow it? Obama knock this one out of the ball park and this is what his campaign is about. He does want to make a change and not just add another line to his resume.
i agree with you all over the place….but this also is where i have a problem with obama…he says all the right things….but he does things that negate it so it seems like pandering to me when i hear it…for example…he gave a great speech in front of a mostly AA audience on extending equal rights to the lgbt community…it was a really moving speech….but then you hear he doesnt want his picture taken with gavin newsome (not a rumor, it was right out of the horses mouth) and he keeps donnie mcglurckle or whatever his name is on his tour….it leaves me with a feeling of disingenuity…..like he will say anything …there is no doubt he has a silver tongue….i want to believe….but words arent proof….actions are….and i cant ignore them….i apply the same standards to the rest of them and im not saying ill ever find perfection….but something niggles away at me and keeps me from believing….count me as a very wary, unconvinced, reluctant supporter….not that i will stay home, not vote or vote republican….but if we get to the convention without a clear winner and either clinton or obama seems mortally wounded, im all for picking someone else….even biden.
speaking of which….obama doesnt seem as “clean” as biden described him a year ago….he has been dirtied during the process.
can’t mold a perfect union with an imperfect leader.
Then we will never have a perfect union, because people, and by extension their leaders, are imperfect.
But the Constitution doesn’t say the union has to be perfect — it just says “more perfect,” or as I read it, “closer to perfection.” And that, we can by God shoot for, and if we aim for the stars and fall a little short, isn’t that better than aiming for the ground and hitting it?
“If we aim for the stars and fall a little short, isn’t that better than aiming for the ground and hitting it?”
YES YES YES YESSSSSSSS!
This is the most concise argument for Obama and against Clinton I’ve heard. (Obama’s speech is a more powerful argument, but a tad bit longer.)
Very well said.
Nicely phrased!!!
Anna, there have been a number of times where a lot of people have not wanted their pictures taken with Gavin Newsom. And if you lived out here you would have seen Newsom getting dirtied up too. If Newsom runs for Governor here in California, as has been rumored, he’ll be dirtied up too for the good things that he’s done for the LGBT community.
Is Obama an enemy of the LGBT community? I don’t think so. I think he’s cautious.
Expect a lot more mud to be thrown between now and November. Just realize that from this point on when someone tries to reinject Rev. Wright or tries to play the race card, that it’s the person who’s throwing the mud and not the target. Those people are the enemies to progress.
Today’s speech was about America’s racial divide. No one else has ever given as good a political speech on race in America as this speech.
The speech was Lincoln-esque in its use of rhetoric. Rather than condemn unequivocably either side of the racial divide it sought repentance and reconciliation from and with both. Logically constructed, it also appealed to our emotions, but to those that represent our better selves, as you said, rather than the darker emotions of fear and hatred, much as Lincoln’s best speeched did also. Regardless of what happens in this campaign, this speech will be remembered as the high point of this campaign, and one of the great speeches of the 21st century. If I were a super delegate and watched this speech, I’d be calling Obama up right now to offer my support. The contrast with Clinton, who has run an uninspiring and mainly negative campaign in the primaries, could not be starker. Imagine the last night of the convention when the nominee gives his or her acceptance speech and consider who you would rather have standing there talking to millions of voters.
This a really went far in makignme feel like my vote for Obama was justified
Obama gets it. It’s not about him, it’s about us.
After Edwards pulled out I was on the fence as between him and Mrs. Clinton. I liked her policies (except for the Middle East, which perhaps is decisive for me), and I respected her guts. I didn’t like the gold diggers she attracted to her campaign team, but overall, I was undecided. In the past six weeks I have turned completely to Obama, to the point where as an ex-pat I was thinking perhaps I wouldn’t vote this time if Mrs C were running. Especially since I vote out of WA, where she will win anyway.
Obama is the real article. We won’t agree with everything he does or says, but we will stand with him on what he stands for. I’m so happy the young people have sensed his greatness.
for those who are still perplexed after a savvy brilliant speech, Too Sense ponders maybe Obama could convert to Judaism
then they’ll brag, Oy, look at my president Barak Obama.
just sporting.
There is no way Hillary could have given that speech or have a counter to it.
It is not because of her oratory skills, but because of her world view and approach to leadership.
Boo, your critique, while I largely agree with it, I think included too much political “calculation” in the speech (while admittedly, including little).
The brilliance of this speech, as with much of his candidacy, is that he is not pandering. He is not doing the predictable. He is not calculating. He is educating and shifting the discussion to a far more productive place.
And America seems ready for it. While I have always thought McCain to be honorable, I am pleased nevertheless to see his quotes with Hannity. As with Obama he is not willing to go there. Hillary seems so out of place in this time.
Unfortunately, I have to judge this speech in a political context. Did it, or did it not, push this issue back far enough that it won’t cripple him in a general election?
Well…he hardly could have written a better speech. I notice that some semi-fair-minded conservatives wanted to hear more about personal responsibility in the black community. I’m not sure how that could have been crafted into such a speech, and he has talked about this often…most recently in the Houston area. Maybe that would have helped him reach a few more people, but overall I think it would have been out of place.
I don’t mean to belittle the speech as calculating, but it damn well better have been goal-oriented, and I think he achieved his goal. I hope John Kerry was taking notes.
What I liked was that he paid lip service to the whole bullshit “personal responsibility” doctrine while, at the same time, neatly sidestepping it. Notice that while he talks about personal responsibility, the weight is on the personal responsibility of everyone to contribute to the common good. It’s not personal responsibility for individual success. It’s personal responsibility for collective success.
And that’s exactly what we need right now. With Wall Street tumbling down around our ears and the captains of industry coming to Washington, hat in hand but demanding that their businesses be saved and that they be rescued from bad luck, bad judgement, and the consequences of their own outright malicious greed, we need someone to take the opportunity to turn the poisonous conservative rhetoric about personal “responsibility” and free markets and “everyone for himself” back on them. It sounds like he’s going to try to change the tune from “every man for himself!” to “all for the common cause”.
“It’s personal responsibility for collective success.”
Yes! I feel the need to pull out my wellworn copy of Invisible Man and start posting quotes…..
Don’t mean to imply you belittled the speech. You didn’t in the least.
I just feel the much larger point is the historical significance of a leading presidential candidate (very likely the next president) talking about race in an unprecedented, an more importantly, constructive way.
Obama is crafting a campaign that will not only get him elected, but more significantly, will position his presidency to create transformational change in America.
The brilliance in today’s speech is not that it had something for everyone to gather votes, but that was so thoughtful on the issue and what it will take to solve it that few, left or right, can have much of a problem with it.
While it acknowledged the problems of race, it pointed out that those issues are subordinate to the problems of securing the future for ourselves and our kids.
By contrast Hillary can do all she wants to prove she is a competent manager and political tactician, but his thought leadership transcends a mere arm reaching across the aisle because he brings with him a hoard of folks who are buying into a new way thinking of ourselves as American (and many who never bought into the tired and failed political schema in the first place)
BTW, maybe I deserve a Wolfgang Blitzer demerit.
on line vote
1st about the success of the speech and
2nd about whether the country is ready for a black presnit
(Although after 7 + years of having an idiot presnit, any other presnit with an IQ over 40 would be nice!)
(Shouldn’t BO be labeled a WHITE presnit since he is 50% white?)
Shouldn’t BO be labeled a WHITE presnit since he is 50% white?
The Clinton campaign’s next negative ad — How can you have real change by electing another privileged white man to the Presidency?
I was just running over here to paste the quote you started with. THAT, in a nutshell, is why the speech was so good.
Not this time.
This time, we have a choice. And it’s our choice. Will we continue to focus on hate, negativity, and the things that divide us from each other?
Or will we give up those security blankets and chart a new course into the 21st century, one without boundaries, one where we realize our individual needs can only be met by taking care of our collective needs?
I fear that the politics of hate and division are dragging us down into a third-world position, with the rich exploiting the poor, and race and gender and false dichotomies of “left” and “right” when we should be talking about “haves” and “have nots.”
I hope that we can indeed say, “Not this time,” and move the debate into more productive territory.
I did a write up on the speech on my own blog using that exact same quote. What I heard was him telling the press, “This is it. After this, it’s a non-story. I wrote:
.
It took me awhile to figure out why they looked so beaten. Then when Buchanan tried to get back on the old story, the look on Scarborough’s face said it all: That horse is dead. The vultures tried to pick it clean, but Obama just lifted it up and buried it with dignity.
As I said before, anyone who doesn’t see what this speech just did is heavily invested in their hate. I’ve seen comments from people who’ve made it clear that they oppose Obama because of his skin color try to attack this speech. Even their fellow Clinton supporters are asking them to stop because they do look petty and small.
The entire time watching it though, I wondered what Clinton’s reaction would be. Over at TPM they have this statement from her:
Pure Clinton through and through. But I tell you what, there is no way Clinton could have given a speech like this. She lacks the charisma and believability to pull it off. Even if it was about women, it still would have felt like a lecture. No worries, the Clinton’s campaign will try. As I wrote:
This was an historical speech. This was an impressive speech. This was a presidential speech.
I can prove the aptness of your analysis here. One of my friends just switched to Obama. He’s been a die-hard Clinton supporter, although he’s become more and more distressed as she’s gotten more negative.
This just opened his eyes to how good a president Obama would be.
I think the media is embarrassed.
First, they thought he was fantastic, and fell all over him.
Then, they bought into the “media is too nice” meme and started attacking him.
I think now, they all feel guilty, and realize they are part of the problem, not the solution.
I think a lot of people will not sleep as easily tonight, unless they chose love over fear, compassion over hatred, understanding over partisanship.
We’ll see.
As a Jew, I’m not sure that he really needs to reassure a group that comprises less than 2% of the US population. Would it even matter if all Jews voted against him? Likely not unless one subscribes to the old Jews control the world manner of thinking, and I don’t believe that you fall into that category, BooMan.
Further, it’s my impression that the AIPAC crowd represents a minority of American Jews. The Jews I know are relieved that he didn’t scramble to bow down before AIPAC/Lieberman/Likud. His measured response tells me that he might finally become the president who advances the cause of peace in that corner of the ME.
A successful campaign needs three things – money, volunteers and votes. Some groups you approach primarily for their votes, others primarily for their volunteers, and yet others primarily for their money. The Jewish community may be small in numbers but they can summon a vast amount of money to be spent on a candidate’s behalf or against a candidate, and lest Obama finds Hillary with a fresh infusion of several million dollars he would be wise to placate aggravated Jews as best he can.
That would be a very risky investment. I don’t think too many Jews are ready to risk it. The backlash if Hillary loses would be devastating and possibly permanent.
They’re a small demographic and have relatively little power, except in one regard: they were the targets of one of the most publicized campaigns of coordianted genocide in recent history. This gives conservative Jewish leaders a disproportionate amount of power. Anyone, particularly any politician, seen as opposing the policies of the current rulers of Israel is automatically branded anti-Semitic.
In other words, said clique wields a lot of moral power. And since Americans seem to like to think of themselves as moral, this lets them do immense damage to candidates when they want to.
I am disturbed to see that the speech is not 6 hours old and it seems to already be (nearly) pushed off the front page by the rate cut, stock surge and 7 year old infidelity by NY’s first couple.
Perhaps, like the Gettysburg address, no one will notice to much later. 🙁
OTOH if he completely defused race as an issue, then maybe that’s a good thing
Unfortunately, resolving conflicts is shitty news. Ugh. 🙁
Well I am watching Chris Mathews now and he seems to have been truly moved by the speech. Yesterday he was agreeing with Tucker Carlson that Wright’s remarks were extremely damaging and may make Obama unelectable. But this speech seems to have changed him in some fundamental way. All three guests so far as well, including Michael Smerconish, a conservative radio host.
I suspect that the speech has caused the news media to step back and take a look in the mirror. And many of them don’t like what they see.
If so, it’s about time.
Yeah, I just took a break to watch and Matthews seemed quieter, more reflective than his normal bombastic self. Almost painful to him and the guests all so reflective.
Course I hear that Fox has problems of its own…one of the station’s own brought bed bugs in and the place was infested. When the exterminators went to the home of the guy who brought it in they said it was the worst case of infestation they’d seen in 20 years. Explains alot.
Wow. Hagee was right after all about his god bringing down plague upon the evil ones.
Wow. Just reading that made me sqirm involuntarily. Sheesh.
So much so, that I can’t even spell “squirm.”
They’re probably just lost and confused: all of a sudden politicians are talking about basic values and realities, not delegates and haircuts. Kind of like a stripper reporting for duty and finding all the poles are gone.
Read your ‘lost and confused’ line and thought maybe you were referring to the bed bugs over at Fox…
When this silly tempest broke, I thought Obama might just have it in him to turn crap into gold. He managed brilliantly to use a fake scandal to take his campaign to a deeper, more personal, more substantive level. He has risen to the level of the very best of our politicians.
Over at Open Left and much of the rest of the “left” bloglandt, the concern trolls are all over the comments wringing their hands over how he’s lost the white vote, blablabla. I think that’s a load of crap, but if that’s the way it plays, fine. Obama has abstained from the easy apology, the happytalk blur that would have been SOP among politicians most of this century. Instead he chose to share his understanding of the failings as well as the triumphs of the American state. He has offered to take us back to renew the vision of our founding: a Great Experiment.
For me, whether he helped or hurt his campaign is almost beside the point now. He has spoken with a depth and insight unseen in presidential campaigns during my lifetime. If he gains the White House, I’ll celebrate without reserve. If not, I’ll be contented that he lost the election but won a shining place in history.
Re: Israel
When an article penned by Robert Wexler is on the front page of the Jerusalem Post defending Barak Obama, you know things have changed.
I believe Clinton surrogates sent out the Wright tapes and I know they sent out emails mentioning him.
Clinton surrogates like the following don’t woman want change which is why I won’t vote for Hillary no matter what she does.
http://www.wilshireandwashington.com/2008/03/hwd-clinton-bun.html
Daphna Ziman, a Hillary Clinton bundler well-known in Los Angeles political/entertainment circles, raised a lot of hackles last month for an e-mail that questioned Barack Obama’s support of Israel.
Ziman has a new piece now circulating, “The Road to the White House Is Paved By a Distorted Media,” that chides the media for the coverage of the Eliot Spitzer story (she calls them “wolves” and uses the admonishment “shame on you”) but charges that they’ve treated Obama with kid gloves. But she also questions whether and why he has changed his name, and again brings up his support of Israel.
(According to Newsweek, AIPAC says Clinton, Obama and McCain “have strong congressional voting records on issues important to the U.S.-Israel relationship.”)
Is this just my East-Coast bias showing, or is it a little funny to anyone else to have a bigwig from LA — specifically from the entertainment business — upset about a possible name change?? (e.g. Fred Astaire, Marilyn Monroe, and a jillion others)
The funniest comment so far on the article has some strong language and includes the statement, “Black is the new president”! =->
The coolest thing is that already, in spite of some people diving in to get all inflammatory, people are commenting “NOT THIS TIME”. Thank you G-d for Obama taking the high road, and doing it so well. Bc I agree w/everything eodell said about no it’s not going to magically make problems go poof, but it’s a change, it’s an opening we need, it’s stepping away from the call of the lowest common denominator.
Well, now that I’ve seen it I understand why people are saying they’ve never heard a speech like this.
Boo, I agree with the other Longman. The brilliance of this speech isn’t the politics (although I think he did what he needed to do).
Jack Balkin, among others, writes that the legitimacy of our constitution requires that members of the political community see themselves as part of a political project that extends through time. The community can only understand where we are presently in this political project by identifying with what happened in the past. And for the political project that is our constitutional system to succeed, the community must have faith in the possibility of a future where the flaws in our political system are redeemed.
For the last forty years ordinary citizens have not been challenged by their political leaders to talk about our constitutional project. The narrative of progress had stalled. Obama, the civil rights lawyer, law lecturer and community organizer, opened up that discussion again today.
It was brilliant.
I’ll go you one further: for the last forty years, ordinary citizens have not been challenged by their political leaders. They’ve been treated like children or playing pieces, powerless spectators at the table of the real ruling class. Obama seems to be treating them like adults – he’s promising them things, but asking things of them too.
Good. About time. Now let’s see him follow through.
well said. your statement of the underlying message is precisely that l have been unable to put into words.
thank you maryb!
We haven’t had a reason to think about the future – or the past – in optimistic terms since 1968, which happens to be the span of my lifetime (next Tuesday). They killed the dreamers, and with them, in large part, the dreams of a more perfect union.
That is until today. I do pray for his safety – if something should happen to him then we will see the audacity of hatred writ large…
All the young Jews I know are supporting Obama. I’m not sure about older Jews.
There is a divide in the community: there are “Israel Jews” and “social justice Jews.” I think you can understand the difference. We all heard Obama’s stump speech when he mentioned the Jewish freedom riders who were killed. We heard.
Yeah.
And the age gap has a curved part or something — one of the older stalwarts in my congregation himself survived/escaped Germany in the 30s. I had not ever heard this man as angry as he got when he heard someone (a Christian minister) go on about “Muslim blood”.
Some otherwise not-so-into-change voters have been turned off by the Clinton campaign’s (at best) slowness to condemn that kind of fearmongering.
I was really glad to see Jewish leaders across the spectrum act quickly to denounce it some of the email slander! And glad to see nuance in the coverage here.
Prior to today, I hadn’t watched much of Obama’s speeches — I haven’t watched TV or listened to the radio since 1993, and I’ve never felt like I was missing anything. But after listening to everyone and their mother rave about this speech, I watched it online a few minutes ago.
It was a great speech. As an English major with an emphasis on rhetoric, I watch (usually, I read) speeches with a coldly analytic eye. I’m not given to trust or to giving anyone, least of all politicians, the benefit of the doubt. And having recovered from a couple of cults of personality when I was younger, I’m not especially prone to being suckered into them now.
This was probably the first major speech I’ve heard when my mental red pen was mostly still. If I’d had the job of editing it, I’d have tidied it up a little bit here and there, but those are just minor stylistic quibbles. The fact of the matter is that the speech was brilliant, not just from a tactical, political standpoint, but for actually being thoughtful, persuasive, and being phrased and constructed in such a way that it could preach to more than just the left-wing liberal choir.
More importantly, it’s the first time in my lifetime I’ve heard an American leader talk like a mature adult. If there is one thing that has stood out about the Obama campaign from the very beginning, it’s that he has consistently refused to accept the invitation of his detractors to wallow in the mud. Instead, he has at every point elevated the discourse — a phrase I have never before used without irony or sarcasm.
There’s a notion that appears in many Eastern religions under a variety of names, my favorite being “stopping the wheel of karma”. The idea is that we are constantly spinning that wheel when we react thoughtlessly to unjust actions, when we instinctively deal as we have been dealt. And despite the nobility of our intentions, the result is always more injustice. To stop the wheel is to take the evil that comes our way and not to answer it in kind. Let it go, let that impulse die with you instead of turning it loose on the world with new life. I’m sure Mr. Obama would probably think of it in terms of Jesus’ admonition to turn the other cheek, but the concept is the similar, and Obama is apparently a master of it.
Our politics, mostly right-wing but also the oft-mentioned Dem Establishment, is invested fully in spinning the wheel. Playing that game is a guaranteed loser: you can’t win, you can’t break even, and you can’t get out of the game. But it’s the only game they know how to play. If Barack Obama can walk into the middle of that game and stop the wheel — well, I wouldn’t go as far as to say that anything is possible, but a whole bunch of new possibilities will open to us as a nation.
There are no guarantees here. Obama could turn out to be an incompetent president, or he could be overtaken by the terrible reckoning which is our due after so many years of spinning the wheel, but if not, I am now convinced that he could be a catalyst for tremendous change for the better. Not by himself, not by magic, not by opening the clouds for the heavenly choirs, but simply by giving us the opportunity to break the vicious cycle in which we have been trapped for so long. It will be a brief opportunity, and it will be up to us — all of us — to seize it and do the hard work necessary to earn the rewards, but I think people are hungry for it, starving for it, desperate for it. I think the invitation will be accepted.
So yeah, obviously I’m a believer now, however tentatively. Seize this chance. It will be a long time before another comes.
I’d like to add something to my previous comment: I think the most important part of this speech, by a massive margin, is the story at the end, the story of Ashley Baia. It’s a frank and heartbreaking picture of the face of modern poverty. Of having to choose between paying for rent, paying for basic utilities, paying for medical care, or paying for food. It’s an image and awareness that’s been completely absent from political discourse in America for as long as I’ve been paying attention – since the mid-90s. Oh, there’s been plenty of words spent discussing the poor in general, broad strokes, and quite a few bemoaning their stupidity, bad choices, or simple ill luck But there’s been precious little spent discussing poverty or poor people. There’s been no awareness that actual people are suffering for the sake of the ideals of neo-liberal economists and the pocketbooks of Wall Street.
While I’m not holding my breath, I’ve now got some hope that Senator Obama might be able to reintroduce this awareness to modern discourse. He might even be able to do something to rebuild FDR’s safety net, casually shredded by decades of incompetent economic policies under Reagan, Bush, and Clinton.
Casual, hell. The stated aim of these people was, is, has been and will be to roll back the New Deal. Their problem isn’t that they’ve been incompetent — far from it. If you look at their stated aims, they’ve been wildly successful.
I don’t envy President Obama. He’s going to have a tough job ahead of him in restoring our safety net — which the economy will make even more imperative by the time he takes office. He’ll need all the help he can get, including big majorities in the House and Senate. (Yes, I’m discounting the alternate universes in which Obama will not be President next January. McCain would be Bush’s third term and the Republicans in Congress would engage in an orgy of foot-dragging and obfuscation under President Clinton that would make the Congress we have now look like a veritable whirlwind of legislative activity in comparison.) But based on what I’ve seen of him so far I think he can do it.
Booman,
It seems that Rachel Madow reads your blog. You wrote “The reason I think this is effective is that does two important things. First, it appeals to our better angels and speaks the truth to us in a direct way.”
She said the same thing, including the “better angels” reference.