I finally got a chance to read the transcript of President Obama’s speech in Selma. It struck me, at least on paper, as a pretty epic stemwinder. I assume he wrote it with minimal help for his speechwriting staff, although we’ll hear more about that in coming years.
Would I be off base to predict that future students will read and watch this speech like we did with Kennedy’s inaugural and Lincoln’s address at Gettysburg?
Some people said that the president seemed like the old candidate Obama, high on hope and change. I prefer to think that this is who he has been all along.
At this point in his presidency, he just doesn’t give a damn anymore. So, he went to Alabama and talked about the patriotism of the people who gay marry each other and swim across the Rio Grande to get here.
I wouldn’t want to reduce his grand speech to its most hilariously trollish elements, but if Obama was hoping to get reelected again he would have toned that shit WAY down.
Nothing was more satisfying than, 50 years on, having a black president in Selma, saying, “We’re the slaves who built the White House.”
If you don’t like it, too bad.
Giuliani was right. Proof positive that he truly hates America. /snark
Giuliani used to get being a New Yorker, and not just an Archie Bunker New Yorker, either.
But his efforts to pander to a wider audience come across like he’s Ted Nugget’s go-fer.
Martin, you should watch a video of the speech. It was magnificent on every level. I agree this one has staying power.
Yes. They will remember Obama for the drones. And our invasion of Libya.
Don’t forget Obama’s stab in the back to undermine passing single payer. If only the President wouldn’t have undermined that reform, Senators Ben Nelson, Baucus, Lieberman, Lincoln, Pryor, Bayh and Conrad were totally ready to pass single payer. Ben Nelson had been the CEO of a health insurance company, so only Obama’s interference could plausibly explain why Ben refused to support destroying the private health insurance marketplace in the U.S.
Oh, yeah, and the ACA is totally worthless.
Thanks, Obama.
Just like those same students will remember Lincoln for execution of 35 Indians, the suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War, and the printing of greenbacks.
Depends on how much time they spend on the internet, and where, doesn’t it?
… but if Obama was hoping to get reelected again he would have toned that shit WAY down.
There’s something to this. We may never know his real motivations, but he has slowly transformed from being extremely cautious early in his first term to pushing a completely liberal agenda now.
Those of us who favor the liberal agenda are going to think wistfully of what might have been accomplished if he’d taken the more brazen approach at the outset. We really can’t know, of course. But when all the dust settles I think the big regret is not going to be anything to do with ACA or the public option, but the failure to heed Krugman’s advice, and instead going into the 2010 election with the economy still in horrible shape. To some degree this may have been limited by what they could get through the Senate, however the fact that the Obama administration kept saying through 2009 that the economy was going to recover just fine, and then at the end of the year held that “Jobs Summit” but took no actual action, clearly suggests that the Administration didn’t do all it can. And please don’t forget the disaster that was the HAMP administration – here was a law passed that gave the administration the ability to rescue millions of underwater mortgages and get at least some spending back into the economy, and instead the administration interpreted it as a law to postpone the mortgage defaults for a couple of years until the lending institutions were ready to absorb additional repossessions. Clearly a huge missed opportunity that didn’t require any action from Congress.
A good, even fine, speech overall, but not a great one to rank with Lincoln, Kennedy or FDR.
Too long for one thing. Lincolns Gettysburg Address lasted about two minutes. Kennedy’s best speeches — Inaugural, Berliner, We Choose to Go to the Moon, etc — all came in at 20 min or less. Obama could have trimmed his a bit and gained from it.
Most disappointing was the missed opportunity to use the historic occasion to rally the nation in favor of undoing the many rollbacks to voting rights across the country in recent years, which Obama referenced all too briefly. Instead, the theme of the speech seemed to be America A Work In Progress But Progressing Towards Perfection. The glaring exception to that being voting rights, the very point of that march 50 yrs ago.
No mention of the public option — an even bigger disappointment, if you ask me.
This speech will come across to a lot of people as a fundamentally progressive (small-p) speech. Its effects on politics will be subtle and long-term, not immediate action.
The paragraph on cynicism unhinges most criticism of it in the current context. From the President’s perspective, the jury is not in on race relations, the economy, health care reform, war and peace and the other issues for which he gets immediate criticism. And the critics, from his perspective, come either from a framework of greed or one of despair.
The twist that he gives on American exceptionalism is a progressive twist at base.
But the opening in which he first evokes John Lewis on the day of the Selma march 50 years before. And only after that — as the “Kenyan Muslim Socialist” invading Justice Roy Moore’s Alabama — greets the VIPs assembled for the event. And notes pointedly the bipartisan nature of those in attendance. That opening will be remembered.
Also the honoring of the white civil rights volunteers who died registering blacks to vote.
And the prominent reference to the recognizing the right of LGBT Americans to marry–delivered in the turf of Justice Roy Moore.
Textbook writers of the history of this era for schools will key on the historic nature of his Presidency and illustrate that with lines from his major speeches on civil rights and race relations–in part because the form of Presidential history demands that parallelism in treatment and in part because that is the easiest approach to assessing the first black President.
Not that much different from “Memorize the Gettysburg Address. Treat Lincoln as a martyr for the unity of the country. Forget the complexity.”
This speech is the Gettysburg address of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s that smashed de jure segregation. And there likely will not be another speech that will come close. Unless the President wants to regale the 2016 Democratic Convention with a commemoration of Fannie Lou Hamer, that is.
You must WATCH the speech. How the hell did you not WATCH it? Seriously, you do the speech a disservice to not actually view it. The words themselves are powerful, but add on to that an intensity from Obama I’ve never seen.
Yes it was that good. It was not only Obama’s best speech ever, it was the single best political speech I’ve ever seen. I have never seen Obama give a speech with such force and intensity. Seriously, stop what you’re doing, and take 30 minutes and watch the damn thing. I promise you, you will not be sorry.
I was delighted with his term “immoral imagination” to describe the deliberate deceits of the Right, the likes of Mayor Knowles in Ferguson, Sen Inhof…
My God, that was one hell of a speech. A beautiful speech.
More beautiful than a signing ceremony for legislation re-imposing Glass-Steagal?
To steal Rikyrah’s phrase:
Obama has no more phucks to give.