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

by RLee Cook

Photo: Barack Obama Campaign	Photo: National Press Club

On the auspicious evening of July 27th, 2004 when Barack Hussein Obama, the highly-touted Senatorial candidate from Illinois delivered his sterling keynote address to the assembled Democratic Party Convention delegates in historic Boston before a primed national television audience, few Americans could have truly imagined they were witnessing the first in an improbable chain of events which now seem destined to herald his selection as the designated 2008 presidential nominee of the National Democratic Party, sometime probably before the end of June.

Though this hallmark speech was well-received at the time, few of us now, perhaps can remember even one of its key points, phrases or its theme. Except perhaps for avid students of political history, this fact probably does not really much matter to most Democratic Party or independent voters. Because what Americans do know and have learned abundantly about Senator Obama are two things: One, that he has an unrivaled contemporary skill at making good speeches, which articulate a vision of the American soul that touches hearts and inspires people to take action. And two, inarguably, he has made a number of better, more memorable speeches, than the one which first made him nationally famous on that special occasion in Boston in 2004.

There is his standard-issue stump speech, the senator seems to give extemporaneously that we have heard, after impressive Democratic Party primary victories such as the triumphant January 4th Iowa Caucuses, which really ignited his amazing race for the American Presidency. Addressing a Des Moines crowd that surely must have been entranced at the sudden recognition of this history-making event, he said: “Thank you, Iowa. You know they said this day would never come.”

“They said our sights were set too high. They said this country was too divided, too disillusioned to ever come together around a common purpose. But on this January night, at this defining moment in history, you have done what the cynics said we couldn’t do.”

And then he added: “In lines that stretched around schools and churches, in small towns and in big cities, you came together as Democrats, Republicans and independents, to stand up and say that we are one nation. We are one people. And our time for change has come.”

“You said the time has come to move beyond the bitterness and pettiness and anger that’s consumed Washington. To end the political strategy that’s been all about division, and instead make it about addition. To build a coalition for change that stretches through red states and blue states.”