It's 2am. You need some sleep because tomorrow is a big day. But you can't go
to bed because the speech you have to deliver in the morning is a mess. The
pages are all over the floor, the text is too long and you've lost the
thread. There are too many people in the room and the suggestions they are
pitching are stupid. You need to cut, but you don't know what to cut. What's
gone wrong?
I'll tell you, because that's a room I've been in as a speechwriter. What's
gone wrong is that somewhere in the dim, now forgotten, past (about 36 hours
ago in a fast-moving campaign) you failed to ask the key questions - What is
this speech really about? Why am I making it? On Monday night, the night
before he delivered one of the biggest speeches of his career, Barack Obama
was also up until 2am. But the phrase his staff used to describe the work he
was doing in the wee hours is revealing. He was, as they describe it,
“tweaking away”. That's all the speech needed by that point. Because Obama
knew exactly what he wanted to say. He knew precisely why he was delivering
this speech.
He needed to address the remarks of the Rev Jeremiah Wright, and he needed to
do it soon, before his campaign took on any more water. Obama's strategy for
dealing with his race identity is the most important pillar of his entire
campaign. And Wright was threatening it.
Shelby Steele, the African-American author, describes blacks in the US as
employing two different strategies. The first is bargaining - accepting
white innocence as a given and receiving in return both an earnest effort to
prove that acceptance right, and gratitude for the stance. The second is
challenging - treating white attitudes with suspicion and directing
righteous anger at them for the many horrible transgressions of America's
recent past. Challengers get acquiesence, but are feared, not loved.
Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are chall- engers. Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby,
Colin Powell, these are bargainers. And Obama too, of course. He's a classic
bargainer.
Then scandal arrived. The incendiary words of Obama's own pastor, the leader
of the church community he had attended for 20-odd years, became public.
“God Damn America,” YouTube audiences saw Wright declaim. “God Damn America”
on constant loop on the TV news. Had the candidate worshipped with this man
for years? Obama had no choice. He had to reaffirm his status as a
bargainer. He had to respond.
Hence his speech. And what made it politically difficult, what made it a
backfoot move, what made it an attempt to rescue a campaign from trouble,
also made it a great speech, an important speech, a moment of high emotion
and political significance. That's the way with these things. You can't make
a great oration to a local supper club on a wet Thursday. It's in the dock
or on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial or at times of great tension and
controversy you make great speeches. Because you know what the speech is
about. Because you know why you are making it. It matters.
And so, in the wonderful language he uses, but sometimes deploys to say
little, Obama calmly and directly addresses race. He talks of his
disagreement with Wright but also of his love for him. He says that Wright's
anger is understandable but he disagrees with the pastor's idea - the
challenger's contention - that America can't change.
And then in a fantastic section he sweeps past race and says that it is a
distraction. What should America do? “At this moment, in this election, we
can come together and say ‘Not this time'.”
I don't think this speech will disappear. It will endure. Like John Kennedy's
speech addressing his Catholicism, or Lyndon Johnson's addressing civil
rights, this speech will live. It will make the history books, in the
chapter addressing the first serious presidential run by an
African-American. Why? Not because it is necessarily a turning point itself,
but because it will stand as the best expression of the idea that made
Obama's candidacy possible, that made it viable. It will stand as a symbol
of what he needed to do to make his campaign work.
Did Obama write all this himself? His officials say that he did. But they
always say that. There's talk of him dictating the first draft to his
speechwriter Jon Favreau and the closing section, no question about it, was
a long story Obama has used before. The central idea, though? Definitely
Obama's. For nothing is more personal to him than his strategy for dealing
with his racial identity.
And by it his candidacy will live or die.
A PRESIDENTIAL PERFORMANCE
There's astonishingly little of the actor about Barack Obama, and that's meant
as a compliment. He doesn't soar or reach for rhetorical climaxes.
He doesn't twist his audiences' heartstrings even when he's talking of matters
close to his heart. When he speaks of his wife or his “precious daughters”,
there's no throb in his voice. And does this make him bland or dull? Quite
the opposite.
Somehow he has mastered the art of conveying feeling, strong feeling, without
seeming emotionally manipulative. He stands there in his sober suit. His
voice is firm, his body-language surprisingly still. He makes few, if any,
movements with his hands or arms. In terms of delivery, he's as far from the
Rev Jeremiah Wright, the old preacher he manages to berate without
disowning, as it is possible to be. And all this combines to reinforce his
basic message: I have a black face, but I am capable of representing the
nation in all its diversity.
Indeed, you might almost say that he's leadership incarnate. Never, even for a
moment, does Obama lose a sense of quiet power and effortless authority. He
radiates dignity and decency. Myself, I didn't see all his speech, but I saw
him tackle difficult subjects: Rev Wright, the “stain” of slavery, Israel
and “the perverse and hateful ideology of radical Islam”, the supposedly
“wild and wide-eyed liberals” who mistake his candidacy for a form of
affirmative action, the exit polls that suggest he might be a polarising
force and, of course, his own ethnic origins.
Throughout, he struck me as infinitely credible and, indeed, presidential.
Remember Tony Blair's embarrassingly actorly reading of the lesson at Diana's
funeral? Now imagine him in Obama's situation. The smile, the voice, the
undulations of the body would be ingratiating. He would be saying, as ham
actors often implicitly do: love me. Have you seen a replay of Richard
Nixon's Checkers speech? Imagine how he would have dealt with the passage in
which Obama talks of his multi-hued family, starting with the grandparents
who gave their all to the Second World War. Then call up YouTube and look at
Obama in Philadelphia.
Somehow his serious and sober charisma leaves you feeling that, not only is he
the man to heal the divisions left from America's very beginnings, but that
he has the assurance, the intelligence, the stature to deal with such
matters as terrorism, global warming, a faltering economy. As as unactorly
actor he gets five stars from me. As a president - well, perhaps the world
will see.
BENEDICT NIGHTINGALE
THE ISSUE THAT WON'T GO AWAY
Was the speech a turning point? No. Will the issue of the Rev Jeremiah Wright
and his views on race be a burden to Barack Obama all the way to election
day? Yes.
The Illinois senator demonstrated yet again his eloquence in his address in
Philadelphia on Tuesday. The fundamental question about his candidacy,
however, is whether a man who would be the least experienced president of
the United States since Jimmy Carter has the judgment to serve in the Oval
Office. That is the doubt that Hillary Clinton exploited in the Ohio and
Texas primariesand it is the theme that SenatorJohn McCain will hammer home
if Obama is his opponent for the White House.
So Obama cannot win if race is a predominant issue in this election. Wright
was a special embarrassment because he had been so close to the Obama family
and what he said had been captured by television and could be replayed
endlessly to a less than impressed white audience. This speech was a smart
attempt to place distance between candidate and mentor while not denouncing
the man who married the senator and his wife and baptised his children. Yet
what Wright articulated has been expressed by thousands of black pastors
across the US. Is Obama going to repudiate all of them? Will he be believed
if he does?
It has long been clear that the senator can be the first black president only
if he is not seen as a black candidate. Bill Clinton understood this better
than anyone when, in the aftermath of the senator thrashing his wife in the
South Carolina primary, he noted that Jesse Jackson had performed very well
in that state in his 1984 and 1988 bids for the presidency.
Obama has to be above race, not enmeshed in it. His implicit argument that by
electing him Americans would somehow have cleansed themselves of past
distrust will not wash. That is why the chances are that this is not the
last time that the senator will find himself having to confront the matter
of race in this election.
The Democratic Party establishment is privately deeply worried about this
election. This is a year when it should be relatively easy for them to
reclaim the Oval Office, yet there are nagging doubts about whether Obama,
if nominated, could carry states such as Florida, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio
and Pennsylvania, which will determine the outcome of this battle. Obama's
words will undoubtedly impress those who take the trouble to listen to him.
Whether they will work with those who are watching rather than listening is
far more debatable.
TIM HAMES
The United States by race
White 73.9 per cent
Black or African American 12.4 per cent
American Indian and Alaska Native 0.8 per cent
Asian 4.4 per cent
Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander 0.14 per cent
Hispanic or Latino origin 14.8 per cent
Other race 6.3 per cent
Two or more races 2.0 per cent
Source: US Census Bureau, 2006 (figures add up to more than 100 per cent
because Hispanic is classified as origin, not race)
An edited extract from Barack Obama's speech
“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.” Two hundred and
twenty-one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group
of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable
experiment in democracy... And yet words on a parchment would not be enough
to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every colour and
creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States.
What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were
willing to do their part - through protests and struggle, on the streets and
in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at
great risk - to narrow that gap... This was one of the tasks we set forth at
the beginning of this campaign - to continue the long march of those who
came before us.
Reverend Wright is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man
who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the
sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a US
Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and
seminaries in the country, and who for over 30 years led a church that
serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth...
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. 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. These people
are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply
inexcusable. I can assure you it is not... Reverend Wright and other
African-Americans of his generation... came of age in the late Fifties and
early Sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and
opportunity was systematically constricted...The memories of humiliation and
doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of
those years. That anger [finds voice] in the barbershop or around the
kitchen table, in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the
pews...
A similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working
and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly
privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - no
one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch... So when they
are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that
an African-American is getting an advantage in landing a good job, or a spot
in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never
committedresentment buildsover time...
This is where we are right now. It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in
for years... I have never been so naive as to believe that we can get beyond
our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy
- particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.
But I have asserted a firm conviction - a conviction rooted in my faith in God
and my faith in the American people - that working together we can move
beyond some old racial wounds, and that we have no choice if we are to
continue on the path of a more perfect union.
