For about a half hour, he gave an expansive, funny, and optimistic speech that attacked Republicans for counting on voter amnesia and for offering nothing but cynicism and fear. Obama told a Lincolnesque anecdote about a man and a woman (the fundraiser was for Washington senator Patty Murray) who struggled mightily to get a car out a ditch while the driver looked on (sipping a Slurpee, according to the president). Just when the car was back on the road, the driver held out his hand and demanded the keys.
As he finished, I though to myself that this man and his family wake up every morning to an unrelenting torrent of vile racism from the right, a flood of invective that half the left ennobles as economic populism. He persists with a system so stacked against change that mediocrities like Scott Brown, toadies like Mary Landrieu, megalomaniacs like Joe Lieberman, frightened rabbits like Blanche Lincoln, hacks like Ben Nelson, and cynical hypocrites like Olympia Snowe can actually mold legislation simply by threatening to block it, and claim to stand on principle when they do.
And yet, Barack Obama can smile and tell us with conviction that we can believe in the American capacity for goodness and achievement. Me, I don't have that kind of courage or commitment, and I doubt that many do. Anyone who does, deserves respect even from those who disagree with him...
Bob Cesca on Ground Zero and the profaning of Gettysburg. What has happened to Gettysburg is why I revere this place, which is by comparison haunted and pure...
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