I Guess Now We See

A FEW YEARS ago a set was released with the "Great Speeches of the 20th Century." I enjoyed listening to the oratory, and the important exchanges that were first recorded onto wax, then cylinders, then tape and disc. Speeches crafted like that, to inform, to inspire, to convince -- they're rare things.

America has an interesting history with the word. On the one hand, there are some of the most remarkable, poetic documents ever to outline the rights of free people, as embodied in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, which, of course, were documents drafted to be read aloud in the public square.

Lincoln is remembered today not just for what he did, but also for the way he said it. The beauty of that marvel of brevity, the Gettysburg Address. The solemn and dignified 2nd inaugural address, given a month before he died, which seems to call out from then across the gulf of time to the nation that was to be.

We've reached a point now with our reaction dials, and insta polls and tracking technology, where the key is to say as absolutely little as possible. The packaging of politics has been co-opted by the same marketing strategy that sells the shoes on your feet or the swoosh on your back.

And then Barack Obama goes and does a hell of a thing in Philadelphia.



"A More Perfect Union." could be one of those speeches. It's worth reading again and again, and marveling at the courage of it. Because he doesn't back away or engage in the ritual that we've come to wearily expect. He decided to roll the hard eight.

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 O.J. 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." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

It will be incredibly interesting to see how America responds.

The full text of Obama's speech on Race in America, is here.

Time Magazine's analysis is here.