Thank you for getting us one step closer to bumping the novick/merkley argument off the front page! It was making me tired reading through all the comments... And I've heard from a few folks today that the Obama event was great:)

Thought provoking column, Ed. I personally was stuck on this part:

To fully appreciate what Obama has done with this one dramatic moment in history, we only have to lay these words up against the mindless and mean-spirited comments of the likes of Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, Rick Lowry, and Sean Hannity, who look for a way to diminish the conversation that we must have and to replace it with a “gotcha” commentary that serves no purpose but to divide the people and evade the reality of a difficult truth that needs confronting.

Earlier this week the Pew Research Center released its annual "State of the Media" report. It echoes much of your sentiment from above. 'When it came to specific stories, cable news showed a tendency to take the biggest stories of the year and make them bigger, particularly stories that lent themselves to argument, predictions and political divide.'

Watershed? You felt him pissing down your leg?

Ed Smith, your words are so right on, very clear and speak to a deep and level on this very important issue. Keep it up and say it again!! Thank you.

Thank you so much for this column!

As I was watching Obama in Salem on the computer, I took notes on a few of the things he said. This country has a problem with division.....not even Democrats always want to listen to the American people

You and I together can change the country

For those hungering for an inspirational campaign, the Obama speeches today are it!

Now, if someone wants to get into petty arguments about some other campaign, they need to prove why they believe Oregonians want that rather than the man from Illinois who appeals to "the better angels of our natures".

Ed, a great post which clearly illustrates that one man's reach for greatness can inspire others to reach for greatness too.

I was quite struck by this speech--indeed, I had only been mildly leaning towards Obama previously--but sadly the fact is that the right wing pundits and even many of the more rational ones are calling Obama's speech a distraction or even a fraud.

Obama's speech on race was an excellent one. That's why the Republican leaning talking heads are so desperate to discredit it. I believe they will end up doing more damage to their own credibility than they do to Obama. Imagine how a clip of a newsreader dissing Dr. King's "I have a dream" speech would look today.

Barack Obama's Smart Speech "A More Perfect Union": Did It Reveal Him To Be Too Intellectual To Be President? By JOHN W. DEAN

As for me, Obama's speech made me weep. True poetry that our children's grandchildren will be reciting in Elementary Schools generations from now. Ed Smith will become an Oregon icon for calling attention to Obama's greatness.

Apparently Americans like being treated like adults. NYTimes/CBS says 70% approved of the speech. And equal number says the whole Wright issue doesn't affect their vote either way. Majority said that Obama has the ability to help unify the country, down slightly from the last time polled. Most said his views reflected their own.

You know Obama has lived across these divides. He has a brilliance in articulating the wisdom traditions we draw on, "Love your neighbor as yourself." It's not an ideal it's a practice of life. - In Salem today someone asked him about healing the racial and other divides. He said we all are complicit in the problem, and if we're going to address the big problems of our time( war and peace, health care, energy, economy, etc.) we have to find a way to see the world through one another's eyes and stop insisting that our own grievance is the only one. He said, "it's not only good for our soul, and our relationships, it's good for our politics." Pretty good stuff, it's a way beyond guilting, blaming, and marginalizing one another.

Even Peggy Noonan,seasoned Bush I speechwriter and propaganist, liked Obama's speech, hard to believe.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120604775960652829.html?mod=googlenews_wsj A Thinking Man's Speech March 21, 2008

I thought Barack Obama's speech was strong, thoughtful and important. Rather beautifully, it was a speech to think to, not clap to. It was clear that's what he wanted, and this is rare.

The Washington Post has a guest opinion by Mickey Edwards (a thinking person's Republican) which says this is the "straw that broke the camel's back" with regard to his opinion of Cheney.

On Wednesday, reminded of the public's disapproval of the war in Iraq, now five years old, the vice president shrugged off that fact (and thus, the people themselves) with a one-word answer: "So?"

Policy, Cheney went on to say, should not be tailored to fit fluctuations in the public attitudes. If there is one thing public attitudes have not been doing, however, it is fluctuating: Resistance to the Bush administration's Iraq policy has been widespread, entrenched and consistent. Whether public opinion is right or wrong, it is not to be cavalierly dismissed.

Believe it or not, there is a school of thought which has a single standard for the behavior of everyone--children, adults, public figures, ordinary folks.
Peggy Noonan is showing she believes in quality, even from an opponent. Being able to praise an opponent is one sign of maturity.

The single standard I mentioned includes: That there are at least 2 sides of any debate if not more. That gracious, diplomatic remarks should be rewarded ("not always on message with the truth" as opposed to calling someone a liar---and that from a political consultant known to be as outspoken as Rove or Carville or Novick ever was). That people like being treated as individual adults whose intelligence is being respected. That there is value in law, rules, tradition.

The opposite of that point of view is what we saw from the Minnis/Scott crowd--power is not the most important thing -- it is the only thing, rules don't apply to them, it is good to be queen and boss others around, etc.

Problem is, no matter how powerful someone is, how attractive politically they and their "true believer" supporters think they are, there are going to be people with a different point of view who refuse to be bullied.

I am a person of color, a Hawaiian female. I have been the victim of racist comments and behavior living in a white society, here on the mainland. That being said, I will not vote for Obama, as his speech did not move me at all, those sentiments have been better expressed by other black authors, who did not grow up privileged like Obama. I will also not vote for him as he intends to push through a bill that will class Hawaiians as Native Americans so we can be "federally recognized," and so that Republicans, who are lining up to support the bill, can get their big business cronies to put casinos in Hawaii, who have twice voted to keep casinos out. How many Native Americans do you know will say they like the deal they got from the US government? You want to talk about racist, Obama says he'll push that bill through first thing, even though many Native Hawaiian groups don't want it passed. Thanks, all you wonderful white folks who think you can get absolve your guilt by voting for a black man because he soothed your consciences with a speech, and without looking, and I mean REALLY looking and READING to see where a candidate stands on the issues. My three beautiful, compassionate and concerned grown children of mixed race will not vote for him, either, out of respect to their heritage on my side, and what they see as a racial divide by someone who pretends to the voters to be better than that.

S. Nelson, you write a very intelligent comment. Whether or not I agree, we could use a lot more such well reasoned, "this is what I believe and why based on specific instances" commentary here.

Ed, I am also a white, 50 something man raised in the South. I was raised in South Carolina. My three children were born and spent formative years in Louisville, KY. I could write of my own expereinces and transformation and that of my children, but that isn't the purpose.

While I've read Senator Obama's speech and am listening to his Medford speech now, I remain sceptical. I was taught to watch a person's deeds to see if they match up to their words. Unfortunately for me, Senator Obama's deeds don't match his wonderful speech. It is easy to say he distances himself from a pastor's hate speech now, but for 20 years he was a member of the church, married his wife there and raised his two daughters in that church.

I will need more action rather than excellent oratory to overcome that apparent dichotomy.

So all of us are supposed to cut ourselves off from anyone that we disagree with?

If that were the case I wouldn't have any Republican friends or any Christian friends, but I'm happy to say that I have both.

It's obvious that Obama is "damned if he do, damned if he don't" here. Had he thrown his pastor under the bus people would be criticizing him for that, too.

I will not vote for Obama, as his speech did not move me at all, those sentiments have been better expressed by other black authors, who did not grow up privileged like Obama.

Don't be ignorant. Obama's childhood was hardly 'privileged.'

Early life and career of Barack Obama

As a middle-aged non-Christian of mixed backgorund, I have grave misgivings about Hillary Clinton's close association with the group known as The Family. when she makes statements like she wants to "inject faith into policy." Who's faith?

The Family takes credit for some of Clinton's rightward legislative tendencies, including her support for a law guaranteeing "religious freedom" in the workplace, such as for pharmacists who refuse to fill birth control prescriptions and police officers who refuse to guard abortion clinics.

How do I square that with her claims of being pro-choice?

She's been involved with the Family since 1993. How does she defend their philosophy with the idea of a just and democratic society? They believe Family's leaders consider democracy a manifestation of ungodly pride) and “throw away religion” in favor of the truths of the Family. or when they say "The Fellowship believes that the elite win power by the will of God, who uses them for his purposes. Its mission is to help the powerful understand their role in God's plan."

How could anyone be comfortable when Hillary went to weekly bible studies there for years. She also attends most of their meetings and functions. How can she support a group that promotes an extremist form of theocracy with some of the most powerful people in this country?

What about muslims, jews, buddhist? Isn't it time she cut ties with this anti-democratic, elitist, theocratic, and extremist organization?

Can anyone explain to me her on-going association with this group?

From: June [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Friday, March 21, 2008 2:51 PM To: '[email protected]' Subject: You're a Fraud

Dear Mr. Krauthammer:

I am writing in response to your column in The Washington Post in which you allege that Barack Obama’s speech concerning race was a “brilliant fraud.” In my humble opinion, you are not one to throw stones.

First of all, most people go to any given church not because of the pastor, but because that’s where their friends and the bulk of their relatives go or because it’s the most accessible to where they live. I have run the gamut of exposure to virtually all the Christian denominations and to Jewish groups as well, and I can tell you that I have come away from both types of services on many occasions mad as an old wet hen. I sometimes passed out the door at the conclusion of a Protestant service and purposely spurned a pastor’s hand stuck out to be shaken. Only on one occasion during the Civil Rights struggle did I lock horns with a Methodist minister over the fact that his congregation was lily white and apt to remain so and, as a result, got kicked out of his office. It is not in most ordinary people’s makeup to confront their “spiritual leaders” with opposition any more than it is that of Congress to confront the president!

You deride allegiance to a “man of the cloth” who would do such a dastardly deed as suggest that God might justifiably not bless America but damn it for its bloody sins of the past, but King David’s egregious violations of Mosaic Law and any reasonable person’s inherent sense of morality has not stopped generations of Jews from lauding him to the skies and displaying his star on their national flag. As far as we know, Pastor Wright has not screwed someone else’s wife and sent her husband off to war to be killed to get rid of him. I might add that we have not been told that any of the parents of altar boys sexually abused by Catholic priests ever went to the offending clergymen himself and raised Cain. You can’t tell me that not one of the myriad victims ever told someone in his family what had happened to him. We do know that superiors in the Church merely transferred the abuser to another parish when word got to them in a few instances, thus merely perpetuating the threat somewhere else.

I assume from your name that you’re Jewish, so perhaps you don’t need reminding that the most flagrantly biased collective people are religious Jews, and that their prejudice extends not only to Blacks but everyone of every hue who is not Jewish. I was literally forced to leave the home of my Jewish finance’s parents many years ago on first meeting them simply because I was a Gentile. His mother likened such a union to that between a Black and a White, the difference being that no one would be able to detect the racial divide when we walked down the street. At that time, anti-miscegenation laws were still on the books of my native Missouri. Anyone “one-eighth” Negro could not marry a Caucasian, the proportion of such blood in the veins being based on appearance if a family tree was not available. This statute was not repealed until ten years later in 1966. In fact, when I was first told as a youngster about the requirement for blood tests by prospective marriage partners, it was explained to me that the purpose was to determine if one or the other had “Negro blood.” I could tell you more about discrimination by Jews against Gentiles, but that would turn into a novel.

As far as the basis for Rev. Wright’s excoriated remarks is concerned, anyone who has bothered to inform himself about America’s slavery, and then Jim Crow, days and her brutal history of intervention in other countries’ affairs and still believes in a God who doles out retribution that hurts guilty and innocent alike (as “God” does consistently throughout the Torah and the historical books of the Bible) has to wonder if 9/11 was not such a retribution. My first remark on learning what had happened was “Well, we got a little of our own back.” That did not mean I condoned the killing of 3,000 people or thought it should have happened to even an old score; it was a simple acknowledgement that for the first time we had experienced the kind of tragedy in one fell swoop that we had visited in less dramatic and public ways upon countless innocent people throughout South America and elsewhere. Karma catches up sometime. It’s the old wheel-of-fortune scenario. I was so vehemently opposed to our war in Vietnam that I actually investigated the possibility of moving with my two very young sons to Canada. I took absolutely no pride during that period at being “American,” nor do I now. One of the most meaningful and, I thought, appropriate actions back then was the quiet removal of the American flag from the Finney Chapel at Oberlin College in Ohio. I applaud Barack Obama for not wearing a flag pin on his lapel. It would be endorsement of everything our country is doing, and thus would express not pride, but hypocrisy. I don’t think you appreciate what many of us out here feel today towards the war in Iraq and the government that has been responsible for that debacle. Do we hate America? The dirt under our feet, no. The collective image imposed by the policies and attitudes of our Administration? Yes. Let’s be sure we distinguish between these two aspects that add up to who we are before questioning anyone’s “patriotism.” The true patriot is sickened by what he or she has been called upon to support for years now, which has been a blatant violation of everything on which pride in our country traditionally has been and should be predicated.

I agree with Obama's pastor's comments, so no problem there. However I can't possibly vote for someone with Obama's abominable voting record ( way too many times he abstained from voting):

Since taking office in January 2005 Obama has voted to approve EVERY war appropriation the Republicans have put forward, totaling over $300 billion.

He also voted to confirm Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State despite her complicity in the Bush Administration's various false justifications for going to war in Iraq. Why would he vote to make one of the architects of "Operation Iraqi Liberation" the head of US foreign policy? Curiously, he lacked the courage of 13 of his colleagues who voted against her confirmation.

And though he often cites his background as a civil rights lawyer, Obama voted to reauthorize the Patriot Act in July 2005, easily the worse attack on civil liberties in the last half-century. It allows for wholesale eavesdropping on American citizens under the guise of anti-terrorism efforts.

And in March 2006, Obama went out of his way to travel to Connecticut to campaign for Senator Joseph Lieberman who faced a tough challenge by anti-war candidate Ned Lamont. At a Democratic Party dinner attended by Lamont, Obama called Lieberman "his mentor" and urged those in attendance to vote and give financial contributions to him. This is the same Lieberman who Alexander Cockburn called "Bush's closest Democratic ally on the Iraq War." Why would Obama have done that if he was truly against the war?

Recently, with anti-war sentiment on the rise, Obama declared he will get our combat troops out of Iraq in 2009. But Obama isn't actually saying he wants to get all of our troops out of Iraq. At a September 2007 debate before the New Hampshire primary, moderated by Tim Russert, Obama refused to commit to getting our troops out of Iraq by January 2013 and, on the campaign trail, he has repeatedly stated his desire to add 100,000 combat troops to the military.

HIS ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS TO ME. Though I admit it's getting old Nader will get my vote again.

One needn't be a person of color to feel the sting of bigotry. In the early 50's my family immigrated to Alton Illinois, from Oxford England. They already knew something about race relations in the U.S. They'd had African American neighbors in Oxford, a US Airman and his wife who'd been serving on after the war. Lilly used to babysit me sometimes. Warm and wonderful...really GOOD people. When they were coming back to the states, home to Harlem, Mum asked for their address so we could stop and visit when we arrived in New York. Lilly said, "oh honey, you won't want to know us in America"

In Alton our neighbor was a psychologist who taught at a local college. She used to throw rotten plums from her tree at our window...screaming 'dirty rotten foreigners'. My first day of school I was sent home with a note saying I needed to see a therapist for my impediment...a British accent. My parents could feel the racial tension growing by the late 50's, did not understand the deep divide and poor treatment of blacks. In the heat of the summer little black children would come and watch us swim in the community pools from outside the fence, they couldn't come in the whites only pool, and were run off by the lifeguards. That was it for my folks...witnessing the mistreament of those children. We moved north just before the civil rights movement kicked into gear. They've told me since that they didn't want their children exposed to, even taught, prejudice as a moral or civic stance.

It wasn't that long ago. As Obama says, great strides have been made. But we have a long way to go and he is absolutely right that we have to start the conversation, and recognize the problems before we can solve them. We've been patting ourselves on the back for instituting legal means that should create equality, while hiding behind politically correct semantics we use to fool ourselves into thinking we've done enough....that we have reached the goal. Some of us, all colors of us, are harboring some deep, sometimes subconscious, resentments and mistrusts that cannot be legislated away. And how can we think about celebrating diversity if we cannot achieve tolerance?

Wonderful piece you wrote Ed!

Thanks, all you wonderful white folks who think you can get absolve your guilt by voting for a black man because he soothed your consciences with a speech, and without looking, and I mean REALLY looking and READING to see where a candidate stands on the issues.

I'm one of the white folks voting for Obama but am not doing so to absolve some guilt. I have been on friendly terms with blacks all my life. There are two reasons I'm voting for Obama. Of the three remaining candidates, I dread the thought of Hillary or McCain becoming president. They have both proved they will do whatever they think they can get away with, right or wrong, moral or immoral, ethical or unethical to become president. Obama, despite his shortcomings, is not yet in that league. The second reason is that he offers a message of hope, and with lots of luck his supporters will stick with him and to him if he is elected and demand that he live up to his promises, factual and implied. I wouldn't bet my next social security check on that happening, but it is the best option we have.

Make that four reasons I'll be voting for Obama. Hillary and McCain both reneged on their oaths to defend the Constitution which proves that to them the Constitution is just a piece of paper only to be used when it is in their interests and ignored when it doesn't suit them. They both voted for this disastrous war that has evolved into a crime against humanity. They and everyone in Congress who voted for this war should be impeached which helps to explain why impeachment is off the table.

Bill:

I believe you have been taken in by yet another politician who you know little about.

You state you are voting for Mr. Obama simply because he “did not vote for the war.” He continues to indicate he was opposed to the Iraqi Freedom military action when he wasn't even in the Senate and did not have the opportunity to vote for OR against the war. He was not elected into the Senate until 2004!

Please remember that Colin Powell in 2002, as Secretary of State under our current president, argued before our political leadership that the Sunni Muslim dictator Saddam Hussein and Sunni Muslim terrorist Osama bin Laden were in cahoots! He presented testimony before the United Nations Security Council that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of chemical weapons, biological weapons (ie: anthrax), and working to create nuclear weapons in Iraq for the purpose of terrorism. He drew the picture to ask our political leadership to consider a nuclear bomb being detonated on US soil. Colin Powell had a lot of credibility as he was a General and had served as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He convinced our leaders that the best decision to insure our safety from terrorism, under these circumstances was to go directly onto Iraq with military action.

Presented with this information, our political leaders overwhelmingly supported General Powell’s recommendations.

Mr. Powell was the first black secretary of state. He held substantial credibility at the time of this presentation. Unfortunately, his credibility has been diminished as a result of his part in bringing our country to war. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Powell

I doubt that Mr. Obama would have voted against the war under these circumstances. He has even been quoted as being pretty wishy-washy on the topic. “In a meeting with the Chicago Tribune reports at the Democratic National Convention, Obama said, “On Iraq, on paper, there’s not as much difference, I think, between the Bush administration and a Kerry administration as there would have been a year ago. There’s not much of a difference between my position and George Bush’s position at this stage.” (Chicago Tribune, July 27, 2004.) This was during the time he was running (uncontested because his opponent dropped out following allegations of an affair!) for his first (and only) Senate seat.

Mr. Obama is the worse kind of liar. One who hides behind a fuzzy truth. It is a lie when he says, “I didn’t vote for that War!” He was not in office and was not offered the opportunity.

He is a Johnny-come-lately, with a swagger big enough to fool many. However, he is the fool and will be uncovered as such.

Thank you.