Is Brilliant Good Enough?

Yesterday in Philadelphia, Barrack Obama gave a brilliant speech that will be studied as a landmark whether or not he becomes president. The speech was a gem -- a thoughtful, respectful, and honest treatment of America's least tractable issue (and a topic that cannot be articulated honestly in most countries). His talk on race and racism was nuanced, devoid of applause lines or sound bites, and unbelievably honest. This guy does not sound much like other politicians -- one more reason to elect him.

The tough-minded and funny Megan McCardle called it "the best speech I have ever heard a politician deliver (admittedly a low bar)." America's excitable boy, Andrew Sullivan gushed that the talk was

"searing, nuanced, gut-wrenching, loyal, and deeply, deeply Christian speech is the most honest speech on race in America in my adult lifetime. It is a speech we have all been waiting for for a generation. Its ability to embrace both the legitimate fears and resentments of whites and the understandable anger and dashed hopes of many blacks was, in my view, unique in recent American history.

Alan Wolfe, a careful observer and scholar of America's religious and cultural landscape, termed it

"not a political speech in the sense we have gotten used to in this country. I heard instead a speech that, as much as it was about Obama and Wright, was also about us. Our politics does not quite know how to handle such a thing; campaigns are meant to tell people what they can expect to receive, not to ask them to understand, forgive, and reach out.

The speech reconfirmed my view that we would be fortunate as a country to have this voice in the White House.

Whether the speech helps Obama get to the White House however, is a different matter. It may not have been a politically brilliant speech (meaning it is far from clear that it will gain him votes in Pennsylvania, where Hillary is trouncing him at the moment). The speech renewed the sense of mission in his campaign, at the necessary cost of making race a more central issue. It removes any doubt that Obama can respond to serious political attacks. It probably helps with superdelegates, which are the main voters that matter to Obama at this stage. The test will be to see whether the next few days brings high profile endorsements. It should.

In the best tradition of Christianity, Obama condemned the sin by rejected Wright's remarks but embraced the sinner by refusing to throw overboard a father figure for the sake of political expediency.

"As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me," Obama said. "Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years."

Fair enough, but the political problem for Obama remains that many people, especially Midwestern Reagan Democrat swing voters, see the anti-Semitic and racist Jeremiah Wright as an unattractive father figure and question Obama's judgment in forming so close a personal and political alliance with him. These are not questions that can be brushed aside, but Obama's inspiring and mature treatment of them may not win him votes.

The speech contained one truly appalling moment. Obama described Wright as "family," and compared his idiotic/inflammatory views to the racial insensitivity shown by his elderly white grandmother:

"As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me ... I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother -- a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."

Sorry, but comparing the private comments of your frail grandmother to the public ravings of a figure well known in Chicago for his Farrakhan-like analysis of white America is at worst the stupidest and at best the most tone-deaf thing I have ever heard Obama say.

That moment aside (and other people heard that passage differently than I did), Barrack Obama is a man who writes and speaks as movingly as anyone in American history about the need for racial reconciliation and understanding. He should not be tarred for the actions of his pastor (and his pastor arguably should be cut more slack than I give him for venting rage against a white majority that has, in the not-so-distant past, given him reason to be angry).

It was a stunning and important speech. You can watch it above or read it here. You won't see many like it.