Meta-Analysis of the Obama Speech

Reactions to this morning's Obama speech vary, but there's a lot of agreement that it was perhaps the most ambitious political speech of a generation. Andrew Sullivan reacts here, a good collection of reactions here, and others throughout the blogosphere.

The negative critique seems to focus around the fact that the speech may have injected a dose of racial discourse into a candidacy that seemingly transcended race. In the best scenario, however, this liability becomes a huge opportunity. The reaction from the NYTimes above is perhaps the most illustrative ... in the piece an Indiana woman is highlighted:

“There’s a large black church here in Indianapolis,” she mused, “and I just can’t believe the minister talks like that.”

The piece ends with that observation, but the implicit message is that this woman has NO IDEA that the minister of that church quite possibly (probably?) does talk like that. This is a damning reality to confront, wherein the conversation around race in this country emerges as both obtuse and obscured. We can speak in generalities about race relations and create rhetorical tricks that whitewash actual racial tensions, but the bottom line is that many Americans remain willfully ignorant of their neighbors' actual beliefs and experiences. How many white folks have been to a black church on Sunday? How many black folks really understand the complex views many white folks have of the plight of black Americans? This is a scary notion to confront, but at least Obama is challenging us to approach it.

That's the net positive here. I read Obama's speech today, and I was filled with emotion and - for lack of a better term - hope. His candidacy has already won the hearts to many, but engaging folks in this conversation is intellectually challenging (A Sullivan actually has a reader offering a Faulknerian commentary of the speech). When before was our generation encouraged by a leader to do something truly difficult? Further, when we were actually emboldened and excited to embrace such a challenge? Gary Kasparov - the Russian chess champion cum politician - was on Bill Maher's HBO show several months ago, and he painted a rich, intricate picture of Russia's political dynamics. One of Maher's other guests remarked that "he's playing chess while we're all playing checkers." The message was that American politicians rarely give our populace enough credit to engage in discourse that contains shades of gray. This has always been my critique of the democratic party: whereas conservatives are comfortable painting the world in black and white (pun intended), liberals are committed to a world view that contains shades of gray. Are complicated ideas harder to communicate, hence politicize? Of course. But abandoning such ideas relegates our political discourse to stagnation. The amazing thing to me is that Obama didn't condescend to us today. He made things MORE complicated, and we should thank him for that. More politicians should challenge us in this way.

-Education Dude