PAtownhall.com
Pennsylvania's Marketplace of Ideas
Pennsylvania's Marketplace of Ideas
PAtownhall.com
Pennsylvania's Marketplace of Ideas
Pennsylvania's Marketplace of Ideas
by Colin Hanna
Senator Barack Obama's speech on race from the National Constitution Center on March 18th was remarkable in many ways. Several writers and broadcasters have compared it to then-Senator John F. Kennedy's landmark speech on his Catholicism before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in 1960. Others have compared it to Governor Romney's speech on his Mormon faith a few months ago. My first impression was that Senator Obama's was actually better than either of those. But on later reflection, I think that it reveals several serious flaws in his judgment and thus his candidacy.
First, on the positive side. The most moving part of the speech for me dealt with Obama's personal story as the son of black Kenyan father and a white Kansan mother. From that he drew a genuine truth – that in no other country could someone with a similar story become a legitimate candidate for President of that country – and of course the country in question is not merely our own, but also the most powerful nation on earth. His own struggle with personal and racial identity, in particular the consideration of whether he was or was not "black enough," makes him a living metaphor for America's long attempt to atone for what is often called our nation's original sin, its toleration of slavery at the same time that it declared that it was self-evident that each person was created equal.
As the self-styled merchant of hope, Obama's message that, having come out of many, we Americans are indeed one is a truly hopeful one. As a society that genuinely wants to be a civil society, we must work towards such an ideal. It takes work, and sometimes searing honesty. It is not easy. I have personally been involved in the ministry of racial reconciliation within the Christian church, and I know that it is not easy for those who have enjoyed the privilege of preference to be credible as we say to those who have borne its adversity that we are truly sympathetic, that we do indeed try to understand what it's like to be seen in others' eyes as less than fully human, less than fully a child of God. The hard work of racial reconciliation cannot be delegated – not to a pastor, not to a church, and certainly not to a government. It must be accomplished one by one, person to person.
Senator Obama set forth this argument with an eloquence that has been missing in American politics of late – and this speech has elements that really do rise to the level of the best from Washington, Lincoln, Kennedy or Reagan. But that is not all that the speech said, and it is in some of the other messages grafted on to the theme of reconciliation that it not only falls short, but ultimately even fails.
Senator Obama is arguably the least experienced candidate ever to have a serious chance of winning the Presidency. To dismiss that deficiency, he proposes that judgment is a more relevant requirement for our highest office than experience, and that he has demonstrated superior judgment. Yet the lack of judgment that he demonstrated in failing to dissociate himself from the hate-mongering of Reverend Wright is troubling. That he would sanctimoniously call for the termination of Don Imus from CBS on the basis of crude and tasteless remarks about the Rutgers University women's basketball team, while defending his own continued membership in a church whose pastor accused the United States government of "inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color" is a demonstration of poor judgment that is simply stunning. That he would attempt to equate the racially phobic private musings of his grandmother with the public invocation of a pastor for God to damn America, and then dismiss them both as nothing more than the ruminations of a crazy uncle, shows a callousness that makes Don Imus look like a sensitivity trainer.
The uncomfortable conclusion that I reach after reflecting on these inconsistencies is that there is a disconnect of some sort deep within Senator Obama. Like all too many politicians, he wants to have it both ways. He wants to be able to condemn those who oppose him and pardon those who support him. He wants to be the only candidate who can speak authentically about race, and at the same time he wants to present himself as the only candidate who is post-racial. He cannot be both. The gratuitous reference to Geraldine Ferraro's unfortunate remark about him was a particularly cheap shot. It reminded me of the slick trial lawyer who asks a question that is inadmissible in court because he knows that it will have the desired effect on the jury anyway. Obama's rhetoric about Hope and Change, although initially appealing, turns out to be without substance. It is fundamentally empty. His continual appeal that we must strive for unity and find non-partisan ways of dealing with the nation's problems is rendered impotent when we find no real pattern of his having attempted to do so in either the US or the Illinois Senate. Unlike Reagan's optimism, which was philosophically compatible with his embrace of opportunity, Obama's optimism sits uneasily atop his support for entitlements. It is thus exposed as vacuous.
The impact of this speech on Senator Obama's political fortunes is still being sorted out. If, as I suspect, the net effect is that it hurts him more than it helps him, he will have no one to blame but himself. He appears to have written the speech, not some paid writer. The very judgment that he holds up as a more relevant quality than experience therefore may be what derails his candidacy. It is almost like watching the unfolding of a Greek tragedy. Obama's speech on race looked better upon first glance than it does upon more careful examination. So does the candidate.
This has been Colin Hanna of Let Freedom Ring for American Radio Journal.
