"If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child," Obama said. "If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandmother. If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It's that fundamental belief -- I am my brother's keeper, I am my sisters' keeper -- that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family. 'E pluribus unum.' Out of many, one."
"The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats," he said. "But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America."
I hate speechifying most of the time, and reading that had me teary. Here's the transcript, and video.
Appealing to common feelings and ideas, from the heart. Reaching for the good part of American patriotism - tolerance and community, entrepreneurialism and political freedom - rather than the bad part - arrogance and self-righteousness.
Politics and policies through people. His stories don't sound like a politician's theoretical concept of the common man - trekking to a supermarket for a photo-op, trailing camera-men and handlers. He sounds like a guy who talks to people.
You know, a while back, I met a young man named Shamus at the VFW Hall in East Moline, Illinois. He was a good-looking kid, 6-2 or 6-3, clear eyed, with an easy smile. He told me he'd joined the Marines and was heading to Iraq the following week. And as I listened to him explain why he'd enlisted, his absolute faith in our country and its leaders, his devotion to duty and service, I thought this young man was all that any of us might hope for in a child. But then I asked myself: Are we serving Shamus as well as he was serving us?
And he's not an anchorman -- doing a bit of background research, Obama has the policy details, enjoys the game, and has guts. From a New Yorker profile
In Springfield, Obama led a campaign for death-penalty reforms that resulted in unprecedented legislation, requiring the police to videotape all interrogations in cases involving capital crimes.... When he talks about the maneuvering it took to line up the state’s prosecutors behind the videotape bill, and to keep the police associations neutral, his eyes narrow in pleasure. “You can’t always come up with the optimal solution, but you can usually come up with a better solution,” he said over lunch one afternoon. “A good compromise, a good piece of legislation, is like a good sentence.
This record is tremendously impressive. The injustices in the criminal justice system are among the worst things about today's US, and the policies that keep things the way they are held in place by rhetoric on safety and crime control. It's hard to build an alternative vision, and weave support for change into the heart of the system. That's what my heroes at ACLU Texas are doing, bit by bit - they've provedracial profiling, freed people unjustly emprisioned in Tulia, beat a bill to privatize the prisons. I know this is hard and brave and worth doing.
Some time last spring my colleague Rick Klau mentioned that he was setting up a weblog for an obscure Illinois state senator who was running for US Senate. Another example of the Dean team getting involved in the day-to-day, like the ex-Dean guys who've become precinct captains here in Austin and across Texas. Rick told me about the house party he and his wife were planning for Obama, and the home-made hors doevres for 100 that were left over when the party was rescheduled.
So this is the guy Rick was talking about all this time. Wow. He'll get spun by the spin machine, gain a Senate voting record, win friends and enemies. He has the potential to be a national leader - and gets to show all of us in his next job. The conventional wisdom is charisma - but inspiration and connection, substance and guts isn't charisma, it is greatness.
The comparison to Tiger Woods gets a lot of the silliness of US racialism in a nutshell. Quick, off the top of your head, which tall, pudgy baseball player does Bill Clinton resemble. What actor does George W look like? You can't think of any, right? All middle-aged white guys look alike. We've got one tall skinny tan guy in politics, so he looks like that one other tall skinny tan guy who plays golf. Geez.
Posted by alevin at July 28, 2004 09:41 AM | TrackBack