The Baron’s been on the road the last couple of days and hence hasn’t had time for any posts, and while bloggin’ time is still fleeting for me until the end of the week, I just heard (and read, via his Website) the Obama "Perfect Union" speech, and wanted to weigh in with a couple of observations. First, it’s a marvelous speech in its own right, with a deep and finely nuanced big-picture sense of history, and Obama’s delivery, while somewhat flat and less uplifting than his typical stump speech, seemed more apropos of the moment, given the greater issues he wanted to address.
Still, I have to wonder: was this the right speech at the right time? Personally, I can’t help but wonder if his camp hasn’t made a serious miscalculation by responding to the Wright controversy with a lengthy discourse on the state of race relations when the short-term, hot-button issue that it raised initially in the Bobblehead Media struck me as less about race as about religion---specifically, Obama’s religious affiliation, and the questions of judgment that arose out of it vis a vis the tone and tenor of Pastor’s Wright’s sermons.
I was driving in my car yesterday, several hundred miles, and during the day I came up with what I thought would be the perfect solution---a modern-day version of "Checkers": Something short and sweet, maybe five minutes max on prime-time TV, that would settle the matter once and for all, and maybe even leave him smelling sweeter than a rose afterward. The speech as I envisioned it had three component parts:
(1) A simple declaration of political principles, i.e., that as President, he’ll swear to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, and obey the will of the American people, not the dictates of any pastor or the doctrines of any church. In short, the kind of summation that Mitt Romney should have made a couple of months ago but didn’t.
(2) Personalize Pastor Wright by reminding the audience of the times in which Wright grew up and of the experiences that formed his worldview. Obama touched on this today, and eloquently, but I would have liked to have seen him lay on the "greatest generation" angle a bit more heavily, framing Wright’s divisive oratory as the bitter admonishments of our elders for failing to live up to their expectations, for having failed to have done a better job of working to create that more perfect union that Obama spoke of today.
(3) Finally, close with a brief chapter from Scripture as a way of illustrating the kinds of lessons he's learned as a member of Trinity Church. I would have argued for the parable of the Prodigal Son, reminding the viewers, however subtly, of the parallels between that story and Obama’s own remarkable biography, of a young man who came of age far away from home, who turned away from a life of drugs and dissolution, and who dedicated himself to serving others. All told, I think he could have nailed this in only a few minutes, as I’ve said, and that it would have been a lot more effective in diffusing this issue than the speech he actually delivered. For eloquence, grace and vision, it certainly rates an A, but for its timing and (dare I say?) political judgment, it's hard for me now to see it any higher than a C-plus. The knock on Obama up to now (and there haven't been many) has been that while he's been a master campaigner and a skilled organizer, he hasn't yet shown the ability to go for the jugular, to seal the deal, and I fear that this speech today would tend to confirm that suspicion among many of his detractors. I guess we'll all know more in a few days.
---Vitelius
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