The American Saga of Senator Barack Obama & the Reverend Jeremiah Wright (2)

by RLee Cook

“Because that’s how we’ll win in November, and that’s how we’ll finally meet the challenges that we face as a nation. We are choosing hope over fear. We’re choosing unity over division, and sending a powerful message that change is coming to America.”

He continued: “you said the time has come to tell the lobbyists who think their money and their influence speak louder than our voices that they don’t own this government—we do. And we are here to take it back.”

“The time has come for a president who will be honest about the choices and the challenges we face, who will listen to you and learn from you, even when we disagree, who won’t just tell you what you want to hear, but what you need to know.”

And among other things, he promised: “I’ll be a president who finally makes health care affordable and available to every single American...by bringing Democrats and Republicans together to get the job done. I’ll be a president who ends the tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas and put a middle-class tax cut into the pockets of working Americans who deserve it.”

“I’ll be a president who harnesses the ingenuity of farmers and scientists and entrepreneurs to free this nation from the tyranny of oil once and for all. I’ll be a president who ends this war in Iraq and finally brings our troops home...who restores our moral standing, who understands that 9/11 is not a way to scare up votes but a challenge that should unite America and the world against the common threats of the 21st century.”

To a growing chorus of enthusiastic applause around the country, he repeated these themes and hammered home his key points variously in speeches he gave up through Super Tuesday, where his surprising string of victories on this politically electrifying February 2nd night, put Americans far and wide and the world-at-large on notice, that once again and at long last, something uniquely promising appeared to be taking shape in America.

Indeed, because of the apparent increasing effectiveness of these campaign speeches Senator Obama suddenly came under attack from Democratic Party rival Hilary Clinton for being what she scornfully described as someone who was “a good talker” but not a man of action. “There’s a big difference between us”, she asserted to a gathering at an Ohio General Motors plant. “Speeches versus solutions, talk versus action. You know, some people may think words are change. But you and I know better”, she said to the crowd. “Words are cheap. I know it takes work.”

In response to this first in what would become an onslaught of attacks, Senator Obama borrowed a page from the playbook of his close friend and advisor Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts by literally taking a phrase or two from one of Patrick’s previous speeches from his own hotly contested election campaign in 2006. “Don’t tell me words don’t matter”, Obama responded to Senator Clinton’s comments. “I have a dream” “Just words?” he asked. “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal” “Just words?” “We have nothing to fear but fear itself” “Just words. Just speeches?” he asked rhetorically of his Wisconsin audience of Democrats at a party fundraiser, to resounding cheers.

And of course we know of the rapid response of his increasingly arch and caustic critic Senator Hilary Clinton---who once had been the Democratic Party race’s frontrunner and presumed nominee but who now found herself suddenly eclipsed. She and her campaign aides accused him of virtually “stealing lyrics” from somebody else’s song and worse---without proper attribution.

But as most of the literate world undoubtedly knows, his most salient speech to date was delivered on Tuesday, March 18th, in Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center, in response to the Reverend Jeremiah Wright matter, on the poignant subject of American race relations. Clearly, the speech was a rather desperate attempt by Obama to quiet an increasingly raucous chorus of critics of his long-time pastor and their continuing though now tenuous personal relationship over some of Rev. Wright’s controversial remarks and views.

Although the American public generally and the great preponderance of editorialists and media pundits across the country reacted to his speech favorably, and he has, according to most recent polls, recouped almost all lost ground in the controversy’s immediate aftermath, there still persists in the minds of some Obama opponents a discontent with his response.