From MLK to Barack Obama

Hillary Clinton is a gifted politician.  Watching her give a press conference like the one she held today in Philadelphia, one cannot help but be struck by her mastery of policy and the facility with which she moves between subjects.  She was absolutely fluent on both the troop surge in Iraq and the decisions the Fed has made over the past couple of days to stabilize the faltering economy.  In short, she's a big-time wonk.  I have few doubts that her grasp of the issues and extraordinary intellect would serve her well were she to sit in the Oval Office.

But then there's Barack Obama.  The speech he gave this morning on race in America illustrated clearly the difference between what he brings to the table and what both Clinton and McCain have to offer.  Now, unlike Geraldine Ferraro, I do not think that being a black man gives you a leg up on the competition when running for the presidency of the United States.  It does, however, legitimize your positions and feelings expressed when discussing the history and current status of racial divide and intolerance in America.  It just does.  If you want to discover how AIDS affects a community, go talk to a gay man or a drug addict who uses needles.  If you want to get to the bottom of the effects of racial oppression, you're probably best served by starting in the black community in this country.

Obama made the most important speech today this nation has heard since Martin Luther King's words, "I Have a Dream," thundered across the mall as he spoke to the March on Washington from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963.  King said:

"I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations.  Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells.  Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality.  You have been the veterans of creative suffering.  Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.  Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream.  It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the meaning of its creed:  "We hold these truths to be self-evident:  that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood."

That speech, as much as any single event, emboldened President John Kennedy's civil rights position and allowed Lyndon Johnson to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 after Kennedy was assassinated.  It gave a voice to America's hopes and fears and laid bare the fields of oppression sown by state-sponsored segregation and racism.  As white Americans, we could no longer credibly view blacks as them.  They were us.

It was a landmark moment.  But old prejudices and fears die hard, as the Rev. Wright controversy reminds us.  This country still has much work to do.  It is still a nation of rich vs. poor and the haves choose not to live amongst the have-nots.  Most of the haves are white.  Most of the have-nots, are not.  It's denial to pretend that the disparities in this country do not create animosities between those who eat well and live comfortably and those for whom each day is a struggle.  Often we are happy to engage in that pretense, but it doesn't make it any more true.

We have an opportunity to take a huge step here.  In his speech, Obama said:

"...in this election, we can come together and say, 'Not this time.'  This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children.  This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem.  The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy.  Not this time."

And he said:

"This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag."

And then he said:

"I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country.  This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected.  And today, whenever I find myself doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation -- the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election."

Barack Obama is another, the next, landmark moment.  It is so rare, perhaps to the point of being generationally unique, to encounter a figure who can bridge the divides that traverse this country, be they racial, economic or religious.  Who can speak to all Americans without playing on mistrust and ignorance.  A Farrakhan or Wright often fall short and end up speaking only to their base.  King was the master and his legacy is supported by his towering achievements.  We would not be where we are today without his leadership.  

But it is Obama now who is speaking to those "sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners."  It is Obama who is inviting us to take a seat at the "table of brotherhood."  Obama is the dream of which Martin Luther King was speaking.  He's multi-colored, multi-cultural, non-ideological.  He's the perfect conduit through which we can open a national dialogue and perhaps come together as a result.

These moments don't come often.  This would be the second of my lifetime.  The speech that Obama gave today transcended politics.  It would have been easy for him to renounce categorically the Rev. Wright and all of his provocative statements.  It would have been the politically correct move.  The right move to help him get elected.  But that's not why Obama is doing this.  He's bigger than that.  It's what separates him from Hillary Clinton.  She is a political machine and her mind can crunch electoral odds and the political outcomes of comparative policy positions with the best of them.  But Obama's mind works with a creative brilliance that makes accessible to him an extra dimension.  It allows him to take a potential depth charge like Rev. Wright's sermons and transform it into an opportunity to move this country forward.  He's not willing to play politics-as-usual with an issue so crucial to our future as a nation.  If falling short in his quest for the presidency is the price he has to pay for not choosing the politically expedient road here, so be it.   I believe it's a sacrifice he's willing to make.  The stakes are that high.

Obama Can't Afford To Be Wright

Barack Hussein Obama has a God problem.  And it's not the one I've written about before, wherein ignorant and incurious Americans -- many of whose votes he's going to need to win the Democratic nomination and general election -- believe he's an unpatriotic Muslim, in large part because of his middle name.  For the sake of argument, let's assume he can overcome that inane storyline over the next few weeks and months and convince the overwhelming majority of the voting public that he is a good Christian and loyal American.  

I'm sure it's exasperating.  It's like trying to convince strangers that you love your mother.  Of course you love her.  She's your mother.  Yeah, but prove it.  You see?  It's tougher than it looks.  However, he's a very smart guy and a gifted communicator -- he might pull it off.  

However, this little tempest that's brewing with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his pastor as well as spiritual advisor of twenty years, could turn ugly fast.  Here are some highlights from a sermon Wright gave in 2006, noted in a Wall Street Journal editorial today written by Ronald Kessler and included in the McCain campaign's packets of news clips it distributes to the press:

"We've got more black men in prison than there are in college," he began.  "Racism is alive and well.  Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run.  No black man will ever be considered for president, no matter how hard you run Jesse (Jackson) and no black woman can ever be considered for anything outside what she can give with her body."  

Mr. Wright thundered on:  "America is still the No. 1 killer in the world . . . We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns, and the training of professional killers . . . We bombed Cambodia, Iraq and Nicaragua, killing women and children while trying to get public opinion turned against Castro and Ghadhafi . . . We put (Nelson) Mandela in prison and supported apartheid the whole 27 years he was there.  We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God."

His voice rising, Mr. Wright said, "We supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians and branding anybody who spoke out against it as being anti-Semitic . . . We care nothing about human life if the end justifies the means . . . "

". . . We started the AIDS virus . . . We are only able to maintain our level of living by making sure that Third World people live in grinding poverty. . ."

Three years earlier he sallied forth with,

"the government gives them (black Americans) the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.'  No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people.  God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human.  God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

Never mind that most of what he says is true -- that's irrelevant to the matter.  What is germane is that it's difficult to see how a black candidate, whom some percentage of the public already suspects is Muslim, can win over the hearts and minds of the conservative Democrats and swing Republicans he will need, guided, in part, by a spiritual sherpa who seems to be channeling Malcom X, circa 1964:

"We are Africans, and we happen to be in America.  We are not Americans.  We are a people who formerly were Africans who were kidnapped and brought to America.  Our forefathers weren't Pilgrims.  We didn't land on Plymouth Rock; the rock was landed on us.  We were brought here against our will;  we were not brought here to be made citizens.  We were not brought here to enjoy the constitutional gifts that they speak so beautifully about today.  Because we weren't brought here to be made citizens -- today, now that we've become awakened to some degree, and we begin to ask for those things which they say are supposedly for all Americans, they look upon us with a hostility and unfriendliness."

Malcom spoke those words forty-four years ago and they still resonate today.  But if he had lived, and had preached them last month in a church in Chicago, a church where Obama was a long-time member, they would not have helped Obama's cause.  Anymore than Wright's powerful and moving words are helping him.  For one thing, they call to mind Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan's quasi-endorsement of Obama, a gift he's still trying to return unopened.  There are just too many people happy to jump at the chance to make the specious connection between Obama and Wright's position and, in no time, Pennsylvania voters will be pretty sure that Obama said, "God damn the United States of America," sometime, somewhere back there in a Chicago speech or maybe when he was giving a sermon.  Or something.   

It's a fine line Obama has to walk between telling the truth and telling America what it wants to hear.  Faith and hope are powerful concepts and may yet prove capable of bridging the yawning chasms of race and class and faith that divide this country.  They may prove capable.  But Wright's sermons, if Obama remains unable to separate himself from them, just might sink his candidacy.  It's an open question whether America is ready for a black president.  It's a sure thing they're not ready for an angry black president.

I realize that Obama isn't angry, and he isn't Rev. Wright, and that he has denounced those sermons.  That he has compared Wright to, "an old uncle who says things I don't always agree with."  That's fine.  That's reasonable.  But it may not be enough.  Not for the people whose vote still hangs in the balance.  It's a shame he has to court those votes.  He must feel like Groucho Marx, not caring, "to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members."  But the reality is that he needs those swing votes and, to get them, he must get out in front of this mess. 

 There's an absolutely brilliant piece over at TPM by one of its readers, The Commenter Formerly Known as NCSteve.  It lays out the differences between Obama/Wright and the Clintons/Ferraro.  Which is helpful, as far as it goes.  

But a more accurate comparison is to be made with John McCain and Pastor John Hagee.  Both Wright and Hagee are religious leaders.  Neither speaks for the campaigns.  Both have made extremely incendiary comments about various Americans.  And both have been denounced without being totally rejected by the candidates. 

McCain has taken plenty of flak for parsing his renunciation of Hagee's endorsement.  Given the similarities in the circumstances, isn't it fair to hold Obama to the same standard?  Granted, there is a degree of difference between the two preachers' messages.  That degree being truth.  In Wright's defense, racism is alive and well, we do ignore the Palestinians and we do act supreme.  On the flip side (Hagee's), a good case can be made for the Catholic Church not being "the whore of Babylon," that Hurricane Katrina was not God's judgement upon New Orleans sinners, and that all Muslims do not have a mandate to kill Christians and Jews.

But this isn't about truth, it's about perception.  Obama is running as a unifier.  He can't afford to be put next to Wright's words, pitting blacks against whites, and expect to brush them off as the ravings of an old coot.  Sometimes the truth will set you free.  But sometimes it will wedge you in between a rock and a hard place, too.