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 | Reform Lite: Obama goes soft on pork | |
| Obama: Time to rein in earmarks | |
| Omnibus signing statement | |
| Dems announce earmark reforms | |
| Gays in the military: Is it time? | |
| How Low Can Roland Go? | |
| Robert Gibbbzzzz.... | |
| DE Sen: Castle Leads Biden | |
| Poll: Delaware Loves Its Dems | |
| A Digital 9/11 |
| Obama's Remarks on Earmark Reform | |
| The Future of Russia Goes on Trial | |
| Agree with Obama or You're an 'Ideologue' | |
| Behind the Cell Curve | |
| Obama's Gamble |
| Rev. Jackson's Tears Spoke Volumes | |
| Obama's Getting Off Easy | |
| Who is Prepared to be President? Nobody | |
| "The Dream Lives On" | |
| Caroline Kennedy's Remarks on Sen. Kennedy |
August 30, 2008
Obama's Solid, But Uninspring Speech
By Richard Cohen"There've been times that I thought I couldn't last for long/But now I think I'm able to carry on/It's been a long time coming/But I know a change is gonna come."
Sam Cooke, the great R&B singer, wrote those words in 1963 following a visit to a civil rights event in what was then Jim Crow North Carolina. Thursday evening, an era and more than a thousand miles away, Barack Obama echoed Cooke. "America, this is one of those moments," Obama said. "I believe that as hard as it will be, the change we need is coming." He then mentioned health care.
If you're sick, nothing is as important as health care -- so I don't knock it. But the subject is prosaic, and it was just one car in a long train of programs designed to rebut the charge that Obama's slogan -- "Change!" -- is political cotton candy. Obama went on and on: taxes and schooling, outsourcing and Social Security, energy and drilling, wind power and solar power, and ... etc. It was good. It was necessary, but it was poetry for auditors. There's a difference between interesting and inspirational.
In contrast, Cooke's lyric about change was written to evoke the civil rights struggle. It was music about music. It was purportedly written in response to Bob Dylan's "Blowin' In the Wind," which asked, "How many years can some people exist before they're allowed to be free?" Thursday, the answer came in a shower of fireworks and tears -- a momentous event, a speech that did not do it justice.
The Cooke song came at me by surprise. It is on my iPod, but I had hit "shuffle" and so I had no idea what was coming next. I was exercising, and all of sudden, on the day an African-American took command of the Democratic Party and staked a claim to the White House, the song came on. I stopped. I was struck. I played the song over and over. It was still in my mind when Obama spoke.
Something about Obama's speeches banishes music. This one lacked it. The speech never soared and it never moved. It didn't have pacing, pulse or a sense of the moment. Even the line that should have been evocative of Cooke and the civil rights movement -- of Montgomery and Selma and Memphis, of capricious murder and senseless humiliation, of slavery and penury and the doffing of caps, of being called a "boy" when you were a man and "girl" when you were a woman, of coming in on Thursdays to clean, of sitting in the balcony, of segregated water fountains and state parks and, of course, school -- went by virtually unnoticed.
Maybe that was intended. Barack Obama must remain a black man who happens to be running for president and not a black candidate. Maybe it was intended because Obama cannot be culturally black, otherwise white and Hispanic America would resent that. Maybe it was intended because television is the cool medium and one must be cool. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
A friend of Obama's suggested recently that he tell the story more often of his mother. She was a remarkable woman -- so strong, so principled, so smart, so committed to her children. She was without prejudice, open to the world and embracing of it. Obama replied that he had to be careful. He might go to pieces.
We have to honor deep hurts and mourning that never ends. John McCain sometimes talks about his POW days as if it all happened to someone else. Obama apparently has his own emotional scar tissue. He's entitled. Being a mixed-race kid of a single mom is an uplifting story to the listener but painful to the teller. Not everything needs to be said.
Still, for whatever reason, the tear I got from Cooke I did not get from Obama. History passed like New Year's -- a tick on the clock but, somehow, everything remained the same. A great speaker delivered a good speech.
"I was born by the river in a little tent/And just like the river, I've been running ever since/It's been a long time coming/But I know a change is gonna come."
Sam Cooke, rest in peace. It's here.
