Think about what it must have been like for him. You cannot fake the kind of honesty he showed, and under duress. You cannot strategize such a setting or such a response. In a moment like that, when the world holds its breath and waits for you to fall, no speechwriter's talent, no great orator's skills can help. In that superheated crucible, only the irreducible elements of one's character will remain. That is what we saw, if we cared to look behind the pundits' and talking heads' wild gestures of distraction: we saw what the man is really made of.
Before Obama spoke, he had been expected to address skeletons in closets; other people's closets, mostly, but in American Presidential campaigns the slop and smear of innuendo and guilt by association is generally accepted practice. But in addressing the rather contorted insinuations about his spiritual resources, he also addressed the proverbial dead elephant. (One is tempted to make jokes about the GOP here; let that suffice.)
Barack Obama, right up there on a Presidential campaign platform under vicious assault from even his own Party, spoke for America, for the entire nation, for every person living here, and he dared to speak the unvarnished truth about life in these United States. It is not a pretty thing. But no politician until now has had the courage to take on our national sickness, to expose and air it, and to take genuine responsibility for it. That he accomplished this is beyond question.
And standing right in the middle of the stark wreckage of the American Dream, which appeared for all to see in the light of this man's simple honesty, he invited us all to stand with him, and own it all, and in taking ownership, regain our national integrity.
This is a new kind of "ownership society" indeed! And I might add, he did not drop in for a soundbite in the sodden rubble surrounded by a phalanx of mercenaries and a hand-picked audience; it is the same wreckage you and I and he live in every day of our lives, and we all recognize it. Obama speaks to our real experience and is vindicated and validated by it, and in this he invokes the possibility of real freedom, for a change, not the spurious, hollow kind that we have come to know so well in recent years.
Obama's speaking was absolutely authentic. He did not blame anybody or set one community against another. He took aim at none of the easy targets that might have gathered and harnessed the deep rage of so many of his remarkably varied constituencies; this was the kind of strategy he asks us to put aside as being ultimately bankrupt, and he wants none of it. Instead, he spoke quietly and forthrightly, in simple, personal terms, about terribly difficult and complex problems as they impacted his own life as an American citizen. In this he became a mirror for us all. Somehow, even with all that we might rightly be deeply ashamed of right out in the open, the atmosphere was of compassion rather than shame. Each of us listening could understand how others must feel, though we disagree. We may still disagree; but we no longer need to vilify.
In Obama's speaking, somehow our relationship to those difficult and complex problems was changed, from resignation to hope.
Even me: I am as hardened to political speeches as anyone, and avoid them if possible. But in the storm of spin-doctoring and nonsense that ensued, I knew something extraordinary must have happened. When my son called to ask if I had seen it, I looked it up on the web. It was quite difficult to locate the original, so buried under trivializing, marginalizing, dismissive commentary by the professional opinion-shaper feather-merchants, but you can find it if you look. Try obama dot com. It is well worthwhile.
Even I found myself taking his vision of a new kind of political process seriously. Not because of the concept, though it is sound, but because he embodies that vision, however imperfectly, in the Ghandian sense of being the change we want to see. He is a leader in the most basic sense, going before us and giving himself as an example.
Obama is making no pretense of exceptional gifts; on the contrary, he is, like all of us, equipped only with the courage of his convictions. He is unashamed of our frailties, simply inviting us to rise above them. He clearly belives that we can. Being believed in is a powerful experience. Barack Obama spoke to us the other day, not to our fearful and weary and aching minds, but to our great and generous and indomitable hearts. He spoke like an adult, to other adults, respectfully and straight to the point. We were dignified in the way he spoke to us.
And he introduced us to an idea whose time has surely come. A possibility now exists that was not available before Obama formed the words and spoke them from his mouth. The possibility of coming together as a nation, for the good of every person. The possibility of a country that stands for the dignity of each human being, yes, even Those People. The possibility of a nation based on service instead of patronage, on honor instead of pride, on lifting up one another, instead of taking what advantage we could at others' expense. The possibility of government that listens, instead of dictating. The possibility of government that works for its real masters, the people, instead of subjugating them to the will of a few.
The entire economic system of the world, the parasitic and deadly worm of Profit above human decency, totally mobile and irresponsible Capital, and planet-wide industrial Exploitation, is in full swing and accelerating, toward what end I shudder to think. No great leader is coming to rescue us and put things to rights again. Things never have been right in the first place. But Obama has pointed out, in his gentle way, that a life spent striving for a better world is profoundly different in quality from a life of survival in fear and dispair, regardless of outcome. Just because things seem so terrible is no reason to give up on our ideals of justice and peace and open government. Maybe, just maybe, a leader is with us now who can speak without fear or shame to those issues we so desperately need to bring into the air and start to heal.
That speech was the most revealing and unguarded statement by a politician in my memory, which now spans sixty years. It revealed a bedrock faith in our sense of what is right, in the riskiest moment of the man's career. He did not play us for suckers; he did not gamble on our worst impulses; he is betting everything on our best.
It was truly a great, unprecedented, historic speech. It was worthy of terms like "watershed" and "pivotal" and "turning point". It stands up in any neighborhood, with any community, and under any assault by any ideology. It is welcome in any religious gathering, any scientific community. It will hold its head up in a Humvee in Iraq or a refugee camp in Gaza or Darfur. Its universality of experience and wisdom are clear and present and irresistable to anyone, except of course those whose vested interest lies in unrestrained exploitation and profiteering.
"The line it is drawn, and the curse it is cast ... The times, they are a changing," sang Bob Dylan not so very long ago. Mr. Obama has more than persuaded me of his honest intentions. That's more than I can say of most people, let alone those running for high offices of public trust.
I have followed the careers of our Presidential aspirants with care and a carefully jaundiced eye, and I now believe this is the best we've got, and it ain't too shabby.
