I am on the bandwagon. Watching him speak last night at the convention was more of an accident, as I was speaking to my mother on the phone and she was talking about watching Barak Obama's Keynote Address at the Democratic Convention. I had heard the hype about the "rising star", etc. but I have always been very resistant to buy into that kind of stuff - especially when I knew he was from the Illinois State Senate (having worked in state politics, I can tell you that the IL State Senate is a neat little family of dysfunction). So, now that my MOTHER is staying up late (9:30!) to watch, I had to see it.
It was amazing. I was trying not to be lured in by the hype, but the hype exists for a reason. I said outloud to myself, "I am watching the first african-american president introduce himself." Goosebumps. Embarassing? Maybe. But goosebumps nonetheless.
The text can be found here.
Highlights:
...If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandmother. If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It's that fundamental belief- I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper- that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family. "E pluribus unum." Out of many, one.
...There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.
...I'm not talking about blind optimism here- the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don't talk about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. No, I'm talking about something more substantial. It's the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a millworker's son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too. The audacity of hope!
That's right. It was amazing to see. My only hope is that the US Senate won't ruin him before he gets a decent shot at something higher.
UPDATE: Apparently word is out that Obama wrote the speech himself. I think you can tell he did. It was all in the delivery. He owned each one of those words and it showed. That's why I like him- because he's so genuine. To take a speech mostly crafted by speechwriters and appear to own it, you need an ability to delude yourself- which scares the crap out of me. To pull off being genuine with someone else's words and phrases, you have to start believing they are your own. Clinton was good at this (duhhh), and it's partly why Bush is able to get through most of his speeches while sounding authentic (but there are those moments where you can see he's not even good at deluding himself. Yikes).
Obama's delivery and calm showed a man who not only wrote, believed, and owned the agency of his words, but knew how they tied into something larger than a speech- he knew (or knows) that it needs to be accessible and put forth in a way that lets the message wash over the listeners, and aggregate slowly and softly in the minds and hearts of whoever is within earshot.
CNN's Report Card
