A transcendent moment for the American campaign
The New York Times, far and away the most influential paper in world, usually has the last word. This time, The Times , which backed Hillary Clinton in the New York primary, had the first word—after the historic speech that Barack Obama gave in Philadelphia this past Tuesday.
"There are moments—increasingly rare in risk-abhorrent modern campaigns—when politicians are called upon to bare their fundamental beliefs. In the best of these moments, the speaker does not just salve the current political wound, but also illuminates the larger, troubling issues that the nation is wrestling with."
The New York Times, far and away the most influential paper in world, usually has the last word. This time, The Times, which backed Hillary Clinton in the New York primary, had the first word—after the historic speech that Barack Obama gave in Philadelphia this past Tuesday. "There are moments—increasingly rare in risk-abhorrent modern campaigns—when politicians are called upon to bare their fundamental beliefs. In the best of these moments, the speaker does not just salve the current political wound, but also illuminates the larger, troubling issues that the nation is wrestling with."
It goes on to make references to two inaugurals - by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D Roosevelt - where presidents accomplished this; and to the historic speech in Dallas, in 1960, where John F Kennedy defended the division of church and state so that his own Catholicism bore no threat. Well, this is heady stuff, to be in the league of perhaps the three most important political speeches of US history, but those hearing Obama as he gave it had little doubt that they were in the midst of history and many were in tears. And as the Times put it, in facing his own test of character, it was ‘hard to imagine how he could have handled it better.’
At issue are the inflammatory comments shot around the world of Obama’s pastor, the Rev Jeremiah Wright. What the YouTube snippets don’t make clear is that this is the style of black pastorates in the US—not to mention of born-again ministries, where the temptation to get carried away is seldom resisted. In the minds of the audience, there is, however, a clear divide between Sunday’s exhortations and the work-a-day pastorate, where work is done in the community—bringing food to the needy, conciliation to the troubled, advising those seeking, who have not yet found, faith.
Obama gave a better accounting of the travails of the black community than I have ever heard. Why wouldn’t crime and academic failure characterize a people who never had the chance to invest for their children’s better future, given the endemic bigotry—and legal barriers—all around them, in the world in which the Rev. Wright grew up?
Bit thin on substance
So no, he couldn’t ‘repudiate’ his pastor, any more than he could his white grandmother—who ‘uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.’
But he showed understanding of marginal whites, losing their jobs and watching blacks benefitting from ‘affirmative action’. In other words he'not only cleared the air over a particular controversy—he raised the discussion to a higher plane’
This has all happened at a time when, riding high in delegate count and maybe verging on a smidgen of arrogance, he was beginning to be tested as a bit thin on substance. ‘Obamamania’ was beginning to look like an empty cult around a handsome and charismatic man. What was his experience, it was asked, as if building coalitions in black slums wasn’t far better than travelling as extra baggage on the foreign tours of an ambitious president for eight years?
Now he will feel the confidence to rise above the Clinton taunts, like the appalling suggestion by Bill Clinton that Obama with Hillary as presidential candidate would be an ‘unstoppable force.’ This had been less a serious proposal than yet another attempt by the Clinton machine to get at him, make him feel insubstantial aside their majesty and machinery. He didn’t take that bait, he turned it around on them, probably dooming Hillary’s own hopes of being his vice presidential running mate, if she continues to flounder in the vote count, both popular and in delegates.
Well, of course, it isn’t over until the fat lady sings, and either Democrat faces a formidable foe in John McCain. But with the economy shattered and world confidence in a (Republican) president at historic lows, it should be the Democrat’s year. And we’ve seen the first truly presidential address by any of the candidates, unquestionably the finest since Kennedy’s of 1960.
Obama has revealed what many of us have been suspecting, but wanting full evidence of, that he will be the transformative president to restore American standing in the world, bridging the gaps of race and religion in America, and showing how much a leadership of intelligence and charisma can do to bind up a nation’s wounds. Truly, if I’m right, there won’t have been anything like it since Abe Lincoln.
W. SCOTT THOMPSON is a national security expert who served for American Presidents and is a professor emeritus at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He is the author or editor of 13 books on world political issues andresides in Washington, Bali and Manila
