22 April 2008

Barack Obama's race speech

Barack Obama is not winning the Pennsylvania primary tonight; the only remaining question is the margin of Clinton's victory. The ramifications will be discussed and dissected by the pundits for the next couple weeks. Tonight I'll just blog a reference to the "race" speech Obama gave several months ago. Not the content of the speech; that was viewed by all analysts as superb. As others have noted "it is just plain flat out brilliant—rhetorically, but also in capturing a lot of nuance about race in America. It is so far above the standard we're used to from our pols."

The point I'll make about that speech tonight was first noted in Daily Kos. Obama wrote the speech himself. It wasn't written by a speechwriter, or a committee. It was written by the candidate himself. It's been almost 40 years since a President or presidential candidate wrote a speech for himself. As the Daily Kos said, "It is possible that we will have a President who not only will speak in full, complete sentences, but who will do so in a manner that is eloquent, and who will also be articulate and eloquent in delivering words he is intelligent enough to know, understand, and use in a speech he is capable of writing himself."

He wrote it himself. Think about that.

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