There’s something to be said about turning a dreadfully divisive sermon by the incredibly undiplomatic pastor Jeremiah Wright (“God damn America…”) into golden primaries’ fodder, so a clap for Barack Obama for converting deceleration into momentum. Few things excite The Diplomat more. However, after the very well written historical portion of his race speech ending with “we are truly one”, I started to find his words less and less believable. For starters, the only way that Obama can get away with saying such idealistic phrases like “divisive at a time when we need unity” and “not this time” and then that puzzling u-turn “I’m here because of Ashley”, is because he delivers them with such deadpan, hollow vocals. At the same time, that idealism he got away with sounded like he wasn’t even convincing himself, thereby sucking out any realistic warm fuzzies it could have had. This has always made me wonder why he’s been dubbed such the orator darling.
My real concern though, and where I felt he somewhat abandoned his audience, was when he sarcastically suggested that perhaps the politically safe thing to do was to move on and just hope the issue faded into the woodwork followed by his own rebuttal “but race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now”.
He then goes on to, well, ignore it.
In a way, I’m glad he took the high road in his speech attempting to transcend the real race issue as it’s been consistent with his campaign. I think most of us know and can agree that this election is not about race, or gender for that matter, but more about personalities. However, I’m not glad that he glossed over Reverend Wright’s thoughts on our great racial divide as revealed in his infamous sermon and believe that in the end, Wright spoke more to the issue of race than Obama did, which is unfortunate and weakened the overall point of the speech leaving its very purpose in question. If Barack is your personality of the moment, shouldn’t you expect more from him?
The Diplometer says: A for introduction; an initial A for a seemingly applaudable diplomatic deflection of lurid remarks, but upon a closer reading and finding that initial deflection was somewhat a sweep under the rug, B-; C- for a monotonous, uninspired delivery; A tossed in as bonus for being one of the best speeches in recent history by a politician.
Overall Diplometer Reading: B- (89.5)
Tags: Democratic Primaries, Obama, Politics
