Richard Wolffe reports on Obama's "Race and Politics in America" speech from Philadelphia.
It remains to be seen whether Obama's speech will
quiet the cable news fixation with Wright—and whether addressing race
in such a head-on fashion will pay dividends, in this closely fought
contest, which has seen African-American voters flock overwhelmingly to
his side. Will it win over the blue-collar white males who have been
trending toward his opponent, or drive them away? But if it was a roll
of the dice, Obama took the gamble with gusto—and deftly sought to
repurpose the Wright controversy as an engine of the kind of change he
has offered as the central thrust of his candidacy.
"We
can tackle race only as spectacle, as we did in the O.J. trial. Or in
the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina. Or as
fodder for the nightly news," he said. "We can play Reverend Wright's
sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until
the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or
not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with
his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary
supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can
speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the
general election regardless of his policies. We can do that.
"But
if we do, I can tell you that in the next election we'll be talking
about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another
one. And nothing will change.
"That is one option. Or,
at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, 'Not
this time.' This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that
are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian
children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time
we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't
learn, that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's
problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st-century economy. Not this time."
Afterward
Obama's aides applauded the speech as a way to take control of the
narrative on race—and weave into it the story of his own life. "He has
wanted to make this speech for a long time," says David Axelrod,
Obama's senior strategist. "The question was when. He knew this was the
right time. The firestorm about Wright and [former representative
Geraldine] Ferraro meant that race was creeping up as a kind of
dominant discussion." (Ferraro, a Clinton finance committee member,
resigned her post after her own comments about Obama—suggesting he
would not be enjoying such success as a candidate if he were
white—caused a firestorm.)
Obama dictated a first draft
to his young speechwriter Jon Favreau on Saturday, then reworked the
speech until 3 a.m. Monday. He went at it anew on Tuesday, tweaking
away until 2 a.m. Did Obama's political aides try to warn him off the
idea? "It wasn't even a discussion," says Axelrod. "He was going to do
it. I know this sounds perhaps corny, but he actually believes in the
fairness and good sense of the American people, and the importance of
this issue. His candidacy is predicated on the fact that we can talk to
each other in an honest and forthright way on this and other issues."
READ THE REST HERE.
