Obama’s honesty

Yesterday, I happened to catch the CNN and MSNBC analyses of Barack Obama’s speech on race in Philadelphia and watched as its remarkable message totally evaded the likes of Joe Scarborough and Chris Matthews as they talked about how it might play with white, male blue-collar workers in Pennsylvania.  By continuing to talk about the candidacy of a black man in this manner, they are doing exactly what Obama spoke of in one point of his speech, which is addressing America’s racial history superficially and cynically:

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina – or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

For as long as the pundits continue to see their jobs as projecting how they think the voting public will vote, they shirk their responsibility to report how it does vote.  For as long as the media continues to report how they suppose a news story is being received by the public, they fail to report the news story.  This is why, for as long as  they try to deign what about Barack Obama’s race, background, preacher, etc., will offend the American public, they fail to be useful to the public. 

For as long as we talk about whether this country is ready for a black or a woman or a Jew or a Hispanic, we make ourselves less ready.  We don’t reach a point of great tolerance by trying to exhume ghosts of resentment, unless we confront them honestly and not cynically, as Obama did in his speech. 

I have never felt so much catharsis from a political speech, I think because Obama laid out so honestly the sentiments of different groups in this society and did not disregard any of them as illegitimate.  That is Obama’s power: the ability to unite by addressing divides honestly and sympathetically.

I give him all of the credit in the world for not disavowing Reverend Jeremiah Wright, just as he did not disavow Rezko.  Obama is guilty of nothing, and we should be a lot more worried if he is eager to throw old friends to the curb opportunistically.