Obama speech inspiring
He certainly knows how to work a crowd. Even as he stands out on a podium, bareheaded in the bitter cold, there is no doubt Barack Obama can deliver a well-turned speech, one imbued with passion and elegance in the tradition of the men he so admires, Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. In this he leaves his well-financed opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton, in the dust. Her excruciatingly careful prose and inability to really inspire a large crowd may indeed become her Achilles heel. Obama proved Saturday morning that he has it all over her in the “let's fire up the crowd” department even if he doesn't have her record of service in the Senate.
Obama talked about his own political formation as a civil rights worker in Chicago, his achievements as a state senator and his efforts in Washington to pass ethics laws.
He reiterated his argument that the ideologism plaguing Washington, “the smallness of our politics,” is enervating national debate over the really important issues: poverty, health care, alternative energy and the way out of the conflagration in Iraq.
And he asked his generation, the generation of post-Boomers, to work to address these national concerns. “Each and every time, a new generation has risen up and done what's needed to be done. Today we are called once more — and it is time for our generation to answer that call.”
The theme of generational empowerment echos JFK's inaugural address on an equally cold day in January 1961: “Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans — born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage — and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.”
But Obama's speech was less elaborate than Kennedy's address, as he attempted to capture more of the simplicity and directness of Lincoln, a president whose career Obama invoked over and over as he stood in front of the Old State Capitol, where Lincoln began his political career and where he ran his 1860 presidential campaign. The parallels were deeply intentional: Lincoln went to the White House with little national political experience but with a hardened sense that many difficult measures needed to be taken to hold the Union together.
“I recognize there is a certain presumptuousness — a certain audacity — to this announcement,” Obama told the crowd of about 17,000 huddled together on 7th Avenue, braving the 16-degree temperatures. “I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change.”
And it is going to be a rough learning process, evidenced on Saturday with a planned protest by an anti-abortion group in Springfield — Obama is essentially pro-choice — and the scrutiny of reporters from around the world. They are parsing his every word, going back over his speeches, questioning his explanation about the origins of his name, his meteoric rise, his previous denials that he would run for president, his honesty. Mike Allen, an essayist on Politico.com recently wrote: “The charismatic Illinois senator has enjoyed a lifetime of hagiography, starting with an 800-word story in The New York Times the day after his election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. Now, Obama’s about to endure a going-over that would make a proctologist blush.” Crude, a little exaggerated perhaps, but essentially true.
Lincoln's old friend, Leonard Swett, said his pal Abe was shrewd and tough and could move “people like pieces on a chess board.” If he's going to win the Democratic nomination, Obama is going to have to learn how to do that, too.