Yes, There Was A Speech Thursday

The Republican soccer ball trick of picking an unknown for Veep, along with the coming destruction of New Orleans, has tended to obscure the event at Invesco Field on Thursday night. Well, I'm going to step back from that trap this morning and take a close look at Barack Obama's opening argument for the general election.

In many ways it was the intro video that did a lot of heavy lifting, portraying a real American story, all of which are unique. This is a man whose strength of intellect and talent in connecting with his fellow man has brought him to this moment, and whose determination and belief that he could achieve was paramount. The bio showed Obama's highs and lows (the death of his mother, for example) and set the table for his sharing in suffering, middle class concerns and values.

Then there was the speech. You can follow along:



It started with the typical nods to his fellow candidates, his running mate and those who helped him to this point. The theme was the American promise, the ability for us to come together in common effort and establish that equality of opportunity and the chance for everyone to pursue their dreams. And then, he spoke some truth.

Tonight, more Americans are out of work and more are working harder for less. More of you have lost your homes and even more are watching your home values plummet. More of you have cars you can't afford to drive, credit card bills you can't afford to pay, and tuition that's beyond your reach.

These challenges are not all of government's making. But the failure to respond is a direct result of a broken politics in Washington and the failed policies of George W. Bush.

America, we are better than these last eight years. We are a better country than this.

This country is more decent than one where a woman in Ohio, on the brink of retirement, finds herself one illness away from disaster after a lifetime of hard work.

This country is more generous than one where a man in Indiana has to pack up the equipment he's worked on for twenty years and watch it shipped off to China, and then chokes up as he explains how he felt like a failure when he went home to tell his family the news.

We are more compassionate than a government that lets veterans sleep on our streets and families slide into poverty; that sits on its hands while a major American city drowns before our eyes.

Tonight, I say to the American people, to Democrats and Republicans and Independents across this great land – enough! This moment – this election – is our chance to keep, in the 21st century, the American promise alive. Because next week, in Minnesota, the same party that brought you two terms of George Bush and Dick Cheney will ask this country for a third. And we are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look like the last eight. On November 4th, we must stand up and say: "Eight is enough."

That was really the key moment and it went right up front. The target was not John McCain but Republicanism - the rank stew of cronies, anti-government zealots, warmongers and economic royalists who have held the country in contempt and used the treasury for profit-taking over the past eight years. This open of the speech, tougher than anyone expected, had an anger to it, a sadness at the direction of the nation, and a fortitude to take it back.

Even the section on McCain wedded him to Republican failures.

But the record's clear: John McCain has voted with George Bush ninety percent of the time. Senator McCain likes to talk about judgment, but really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush has been right more than ninety percent of the time? I don't know about you, but I'm not ready to take a ten percent chance on change.

The truth is, on issue after issue that would make a difference in your lives – on health care and education and the economy – Senator McCain has been anything but independent. He said that our economy has made "great progress" under this President. He said that the fundamentals of the economy are strong. And when one of his chief advisors – the man who wrote his economic plan – was talking about the anxiety Americans are feeling, he said that we were just suffering from a "mental recession," and that we've become, and I quote, "a nation of whiners."

A nation of whiners? Tell that to the proud auto workers at a Michigan plant who, after they found out it was closing, kept showing up every day and working as hard as ever, because they knew there were people who counted on the brakes that they made. Tell that to the military families who shoulder their burdens silently as they watch their loved ones leave for their third or fourth or fifth tour of duty. These are not whiners. They work hard and give back and keep going without complaint. These are the Americans that I know.

Now, I don't believe that Senator McCain doesn't care what's going on in the lives of Americans. I just think he doesn't know. Why else would he define middle-class as someone making under five million dollars a year? How else could he propose hundreds of billions in tax breaks for big corporations and oil companies but not one penny of tax relief to more than one hundred million Americans? How else could he offer a health care plan that would actually tax people's benefits, or an education plan that would do nothing to help families pay for college, or a plan that would privatize Social Security and gamble your retirement?

It's not because John McCain doesn't care. It's because John McCain doesn't get it.

For over two decades, he's subscribed to that old, discredited Republican philosophy – give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is – you're on your own. Out of work? Tough luck. No health care? The market will fix it. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps – even if you don't have boots. You're on your own.

Well it's time for them to own their failure. It's time for us to change America.

The YOYO society was something Hillary Clinton talked about a lot in her campaign. It's powerful. It's succinct. And it's correct. This was a Democratic speech, one that understands the role of government to improve people's lives, to work for all Americans instead of against them, that honors work over wealth. This section also got out a lot of information about McCain, on taxing health care benefits as income, on seeking to privatize Social Security. This is the stuff of future ads and mailers. And there was a brilliance in tying the economic hardships and struggles to his own personal story, and showing how government brought him and those in his life to where they are today by providing programs to help them realize their goals.

Rather than shying away from specifics, Obama then launched into a long section identifying exactly where he would divert from current policy. His tax plan (cuts for 95% of Americans, tax fairness and balance ), his energy plan (a legitimate all-of-the-above strategy that includes a few elements I don't like - clean coal, nuclear - but seeks to end all importation of oil from the Middle East in 10 years and invests massively in renewables), his education plan (investment in early childhood education, college funding-for-service plans, higher pay for teachers), his health care plan (affordable and accessible care for all, paid family leave and sick days), and many more got a mention. He put a few Republican-friendly ideas in there (streamlining bureaucracy, parental responsibility), but the domestic policy was committed to Democratic ideals of fairness, equality, opportunity, and the common good.

On foreign policy, he sought to distance his judgment from McCain's. Which is very right. The line about how "John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the Gates of Hell – but he won't even go to the cave where he lives" worked very well. I find the "Iraq has $79 billion dollars and we have deficits" talking point to be kind of distasteful - the idea that they have to fund their own occupation and reconstruction when we destroyed the country is myopic. The overall talk is tougher and more Biden-like (his influence shows here) - I think it's a little disconnected from the traditional liberal internationalism that we all expect from Obama. There's a different audience for Presidential acceptance speeches, and that's fine, but I'm disappointed that Democrats seem to have to rhetorically bring the head of the enemy on a platter for all to see to prove their toughness and defense credentials. There was a fleeting reference to "restoring our moral standing" that needed to be bigger.

I thought this was a solid section:

But what I will not do is suggest that the Senator takes his positions for political purposes. Because one of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other's character and patriotism.

The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain. The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America – they have served the United States of America.

So I've got news for you, John McCain. We all put our country first.

I also appreciated how he took the hot-button issues of abortion, guns, gay marriage and immigration head-on, in a common-sense kind of way, defusing them as issues by finding the space where everyone can agree. America's promise stems from what makes us similar instead of different.

Then, he basically outlined the McCain electoral strategy in a direct and almost dismissive way:

I know there are those who dismiss such beliefs as happy talk. They claim that our insistence on something larger, something firmer and more honest in our public life is just a Trojan Horse for higher taxes and the abandonment of traditional values. And that's to be expected. Because if you don't have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare the voters. If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from.

You make a big election about small things.

And you know what – it's worked before. Because it feeds into the cynicism we all have about government. When Washington doesn't work, all its promises seem empty. If your hopes have been dashed again and again, then it's best to stop hoping, and settle for what you already know.

I get it. I realize that I am not the likeliest candidate for this office. I don't fit the typical pedigree, and I haven't spent my career in the halls of Washington.

But I stand before you tonight because all across America something is stirring. What the nay-sayers don't understand is that this election has never been about me. It's been about you.

The speech ended with a long reference to Martin Luther King's march on Washington 45 years ago, a march that was for jobs as much as freedom and justice and equality, a speech that talked about our togetherness, our need to walk as one for the dreams we seek. Obama's speech was a unity speech, a call to unite as Americans and finally restore the promise that has gone so unfulfilled under Republican rule. It was tough but also inspirational. I didn't agree with every word of it, but I understood it to be the words of a leader.