President Obama gave a speech that was of a piece with all the speeches he has given since he announced his candidacy in 2007-2008. It was short on oratory, but it was appropriate. Too many elections are won by eloquence, and Obama was at one time accused of being too eloquent. So, while Obama used grammatical English (and good spelling, no doubt), he outlined the conflicting economic strategies of the two parties, without stooping to criticize his opponents at the level at which they had been set straight for the previous two days.
The Republican National Convention, while it appeared to have a degree of cultural diversity it had not enjoyed for years, still could not compete with the rainbow of faces and demographics that were on display at the DNC. The Dems, who had soft-pedaled their support for Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals for months, perhaps to save the feelings of the general population, components of which--even if they supported Gay Marriage and LGBT rights-- might still have felt queasy about having the subject constantly brought up, threw caution to the winds in this election season, and starting with Joe Biden, went openly on the record as supporting pro LGBT rights and (possibly) legislation. My wife has a finger on the political pulse of the population simply by virtue of being a part-time campaign-worker, and making phone calls, as campaigns are wont to do. The primary objection to the Democrat ticket is, at least in some quarters, their support for gay marriage; can you believe it? Respondents spit back that they will never support Obama, because of [his support for] Gay Marriage. That's a Whole Nother Story, as they say around here, so we won't go there. So a stealth strategy of the GOP is, even if it is a stealth strategy, to present themselves as the Straight Party. Not only straight, but White, as well. There you go.
Barack Obama has done many things that we can be thankful for, and one of them is that he has presented an alternative for young African American men, and there is now a role model for them other than the highly colorful gentlemen who roam the streets at night, sometimes doing nothing but keeping themselves amused, but at other times being destructive or worse. Barack Obama champions the underdogs, the diverse population, all those who are still fighting to get what they need, rather than to keep what they have, as the Dems have stubbornly pointed out in this Convention. What the Democrats see as Social Welfare, the GOP tries to portray as Wealth Redistribution. Whether it is or it is not, we cannot stop doing it, and we shouldn't. And for the first time, a black man is doing it, with moderate or great enthusiasm from his party. And he does it with good grammar, and good diction.
I imagine that part of the Republican anger at Obama is that he doesn't act like a black man, but like someone from Harvard. Someone from Harvard, they're probably thinking, should not be siding with the enemy. (This is very similar to the German anger against the British during the early years of WW2; there is some reason to believe that they thought that the British, being from a broadly Saxon culture, must surely sympathize with the German plight.) But Harvard, of course, is a big place, and statistically there have to be somebody from there who has some brains (just as not everybody from Yale is as confused as George W. Bush).
All through his speech, Barack Obama reminded us that he was black. But miraculously, he reminded me that he was one of us, and he was fighting for us, but with restraint and judgement, and without resorting to political trickery. Perhaps the time will come when political trickery will be desperately needed, but Obama has judiciously kept away from it in his first year. It is not a matter of being deceitful, I believe. It is a matter of giving the GOP majority in Congress every opportunity to set things right with their agenda, such as it is.
My expectation is that he will win this election, unless there is inexcusable apathy on the part of the voters. He will win this election without expending all of his political capital, and without using unnecessary roughness.
At that point, assuming he is elected to a second term, and assuming that he brings with him a better balance in Congress, ideally a Democratic majority, he can say: we sang to you, but you did not dance. Now things need to be done with bolder strokes. And the bolder strokes means stronger messages from the population about what it wants.
We cannot wait too long before we permit a woman to do for our nation what Barack Obama has done for minorities and blacks. I predict that for a time, minorities and women will lead the US, just as they have done as governors in many Southern states, for instance. But we must have better ways for Congress to know what people want; the newspapers, television and the Web cannot do it, since they really seldom know what people want either. If people do not want health care, Barack Obama cannot thrust it on them. If the people do not want gay marriage, Barack Obama will be the last to force it on them. Remember: there has to be a majority in both Houses to make a constitutional amendment.
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| Jon Stewart keeps poor Austan Goolsbee in stitches |
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