Barack Obama and the Emotional Power of Reason

As great oratory goes, Barack Obama's race speech rivaled JFK's inaugural address, Lincoln's second, and virtually anything ever spoken by FDR. The national jury came in with that unanimous decision after very little deliberation, so I repeat it here without fear of hyperbole.

But his was more -- much more -- than just great oratory. It was, in addition, that rarest of displays -- that of a politician in possession of an authentic and deep historical understanding of the American Experience.

This man does more than memorize and re-heave the latest and hottest-button talking points scribbled by jaded advisers designed to position their guy with a short-term edge. He's a profound thinker, for the benefit of the long haul, and he uniquely invites the nation to think along with him.

That's unprecedented in my lifetime, and was enlightening enough as well to finally move me from mere opposition to one candidate to confident support of another. It takes a lot of something quite powerful to stir a bona fide cynic, but Obama stirred this one.

He did it through the use of an open, personal and pragmatic reasoning power that reminded me of Franklin Roosevelt's fireside chats -- exhortations of splendid leadership, for sure, but also artfully crafted and gentle reminders that we all need to be on the same page before we can effectively move forward.

His speech was the stuff of the professorial without the haughtiness. Between the lines Obama was asking, simply, Do you get it? Do you understand what I'm saying here? Because if you don't, I'll gladly back up and we'll go over this material one more time. And we'll keep going over it until everyone understands. It's not that difficult, really. It's just that no one in my political position has ever asked anything of you before.  

Other politicians ask only for your vote. Obama is asking for your heart and mind. And he seems to genuinely care less about personal power and next-hump victories than national reconciliation through individual comprehension.

Understanding precedes constructive action, if, that is, the action is to take root in real and lasting change. 

Never have I heard a politician so courageously confront the sadly manifest, which other politicians spend lifetimes merely exploiting for temporary advantage:

We have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. 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.

True, those words were necessarily devoted to the race issue. But the sentiment inside addressed every issue lingering on the table -- we can keep buying the slop that's peddled by pols for their benefit, or we can stop, think and say, at long last, No more. The tawdry game of the old politics of personal advantage through group division stops here and now. We wish to come and reason together, but first we must understand.

That's all that Obama was saying, but considering the quotidian servings of dumbed-down and diversionary garbage served up by the business-as-usual political class, it was a lot, a whole lot, and it was profound.

Nothing I've written here was anything you probably didn't hear from the vastly arrayed, network commentariat yesterday. For that redundancy, I apologize. But I would make one observation about the commentariat itself, which I did not hear expressed.

Now keep in mind this is no statistically verifiable sociological survey, but it occurred to me that the women commentators, by and large, seemed to "get it" far better than the males, by and large. One can speculate as to the why, and in the process foolishly get oneself into a lot of hot water. But I'll take the foolish plunge.

Obama's speech required emotional concessions as much as intellectual engagement -- and again, it seemed to me, and perhaps me only out of some old-school and deeply engrained sexist bias, that the women's reception embraced both, as they are better culturally equipped to do. The men, on the other hand, often preferred to trail off on the political mechanics of it all -- this part worked, that part didn't, could be trouble.

In brief, the women seemed to be urging on these collectively assorted insensitive brutes: This man Obama is trying to say something that transcends your superficial obsession with political tactics, you nitwits. Try, for once, opening your hearts as well as your minds and perhaps you can then profitably absorb the full and enlightening impact.

Which is strikingly counterintuitive when you stop to think about it, since it's women that Obama the man has always had the greatest challenge with electorally.