The Reality-Based Community

Glenn Loury and I are old friends and intellectual sparring partners. He's among the least predictable people I know, because he insists on thinking things out for himself and isn't afraid to say what he thinks, and also because his thinking is too full of nuance to have predictable results even if you know roughly where he's coming from.

I wouldn't have predicted, for example, that Glenn would have been a supporter of Hillary Clinton against Barack Obama, a topic we debated on Bloggingheads.tv.

We have continued our exchange off-line, and with his permission I am posting a recent part of that back-and-forth:

GL to MK:

Mark:

I'm interested in your take on the current goings-on re. Jeremiah Wright. I hate to say it, but 'I told you so.' I read you quoted at HuffPost by Tom Edsall as follows:

************

Mark Kleiman, an outspoken Obama backer, blogger, and professor of Public Policy at UCLA, expressed no such fears:

"I think Obama has made it clear that Wright is his past, not his future. The 'black power' stuff is precisely what Obama has chosen to reject. Wright has now been bounced from the campaign's clergy group. So I don't think there's a legitimate political issue left there."

Kleiman argued that "unlike Dukakis, Mondale, Gore, and Kerry, Obama has the wit to avoid being boxed in to a false narrative created by his opponents and their journalistic dupes and accomplices," then adding, "Time will tell."

**********

I regret to inform you that this is wishful thinking, my friend.

What is more, there's a double-bind problem here.

Why didn't BO innoculate himself against this horrific episode by pre-emptively rejecting, denouncing and repudiating Wright's preaching... It now seems obvious that the BO campaign didn't get out in front of this revelation — which can come as no surprise to anyone who knows anything about black preaching; Wright is very well known as a brilliant and powerful iconoclastic voice in that world; tapes of Wright's and other prominent black pastors' sermons are sitting in the archives of thousands of black churches, and are exchanged avidly amongst believers around the country — is that there would have been, as there may yet be, a fiercely negative reaction from black people to such an obviously self-serving move. (Prominent blacks would have argued, contrary to the campaign's interests, that "we were good enough for you to hang with you needed our votes here in Chicago, before you started running for higher national office, but now you're kicking us to the curb.)

Simply put, the campaign didn't want to discourage the racial bloc-voting amongst blacks which has nurtured its success. The central contradiction of Obama's candidacy has been laid bare — it is a tricky business, to say to least, to declare that one wants to 'transcend race' even as, at one and the same time, one is leaning on black racial loyalties as a vital pillar of one's electoral success. (It has not been the only pillar, for sure; it has always been a balancing act.)

Now it seems that the candidate will be hoist on his own petard. There is no Romney-explains-Mormonism-type speech that Obama can fashion that at one in the same time assuages the legitimate concerns raised by the Jeremiah Wright 'revelations' while avoiding an ugly 'blacklash' from the racial fever swamps.

Being a native of Chicago's southside (I graduated from a high school that is about 1.5 miles from Trinity United Church of Christ), I know whereof I speak... But, as you say, time will tell.

GL

MK to GL:

Glenn:

You did indeed tell me so. We'll see whether you were correct.

My reading is that nothing Obama does now will shake his black support, and that the whites who will be scared off by Jeremiah Wright mostly weren't available as Democratic voters anyway.

It's possible to put a less negative construction on Obama's failure to pre-emptively trash Wright. (He'd already been careful to keep him away from the campaign; you'll recall the fuss about Obama's dis-inviting Wright to the campaign kick-off.) If you think Obama's
conversion experience was sincere, and that Wright was one of the moving forces behind it, then it might seem likely that Obama felt, and feels, gratitude toward him, even while regarding him as in some respects a crazy uncle. And he might have some scruples about saying bad things about the church where he was baptized and married and where his children were baptized.

Mark

GL to MK

Mark:

Just one more word on this. You wrote:

My reading is that nothing Obama does now will shake his black
support, and that the whites who will be scared off by Jeremiah Wright
mostly weren't available as Democratic voters anyway.

This may be right, but misses the point, I think. Shaking his black support is not the issue, and besides, that would have little direct electoral consequence for him at this point in the primary campaign. He's already garnered the benefit of solid black electoral backing in racking up now what looks like an insurmountable pledged delegate lead. The danger to BO from this prospective 'blacklash', as I see it, is that it would undermine the credibility of a very real, tacit threat on which he's relying — namely, that, should he be denied the nomination, blacks will take a walk from the polls in November. Should he decide, as I understand he's being advised now, to come out with a major address denouncing what I'll call the 'Jeremiah Wright' tendency within black American public culture — which, I must emphasize, is far more deeply ingrained than many people recognize — this would, I predict, engender strong negative reactions from 'respectable' black public figures, and make the threat of blacks sitting on their hands come this fall far less palpable.

Just a thought. Who knows? But we'll see in due course.

GL

Fortunately, I don't think Obama needs any "threat" to hold on to the nomination; he's simply going to have the delegates. I'm still betting on Obama to be the nominee, and, if nominated, to win the election. The joint probability may be less than 0.5, but somewhere I read that "hope" is the name of a virtue.

[Full text of Obama's speech today at the jump.]

*"A More Perfect Union"
Remarks of Senator Barack Obama
Constitution Center
Tuesday, March 18th, 2008
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania*
**
/As Prepared for Delivery/
//

"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. Farmers and
scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to
escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of
independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring
of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately
unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a
question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a
stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue
for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to
future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded
within our Constitution - a Constitution that had at is very core the
ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised
its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be
perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from
bondage, or provide men and women of every color 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 between the promise of our ideals and the
reality of their time.

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, a march for a
more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous
America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history
because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time
unless we solve them together - unless we perfect our union by
understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common
hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the
same place, but we all want to move in the same direction - towards a
better future for of children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity
of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I
was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a
Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white
grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth
while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America
and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black
American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners - an
inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers,
sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every
hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I
will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even
possible.

It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional candidate. But it
is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this
nation is more than the sum of its parts - that out of many, we are
truly one.

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to
the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this
message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a
purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of
the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the
Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African
Americans and white Americans.

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At
various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either
"too black" or "not black enough." We saw racial tensions bubble to the
surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has
scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization,
not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the
discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.

On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my
candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it's based
solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial
reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we've heard my former
pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express
views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but
views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation;
that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of
Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging
questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of
American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him
make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in
church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views?
Absolutely - just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your
pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply
controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak
out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly
distorted view of this country - a view that sees white racism as
endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we
know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle
East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel,
instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical
Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive,
divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when
we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems - two
wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care
crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are
neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that
confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals,
there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are
not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first
place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if
all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons
that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if
Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being
peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in
much the same way

But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met
more than twenty years ago 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 U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at
some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who
for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing
God's work here on Earth - by housing the homeless, ministering to the
needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison
ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of
my first service at Trinity:

"People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a
forceful wind carrying the reverend's voice up into the rafters....And in
that single note - hope! - I heard something else; at the foot of that
cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the
stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and
Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's
field of dry bones. Those stories - of survival, and freedom, and hope -
became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood,
the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed
once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future
generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at
once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our
journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that
we didn't need to feel shame about...memories that all people might study
and cherish - and with which we could start to rebuild."

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black
churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its
entirety - the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the
former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are
full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of
dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the
untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the
fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and
successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the
black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright.
As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He
strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children.
Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any
ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he
interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within
him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he
has served diligently for so many years.

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. I suppose the
politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just
hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as
a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro,
in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated
racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore
right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made
in his offending sermons about America - to simplify and stereotype and
amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that
have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race
in this country that we've never really worked through - a part of our
union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply
retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come
together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the
need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this
point. As William Faulkner once wrote, "The past isn't dead and buried.
In fact, it isn't even past." We do not need to recite here the history
of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves
that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American
community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an
earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and
Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven't
fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the
inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the
pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students.

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through
violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to
African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access
FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force,
or fire departments - meant that black families could not amass any
meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps
explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the
concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today's
urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and
frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family,
contributed to the erosion of black families - a problem that welfare
policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic
services in so many urban black neighborhoods - parks for kids to play
in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code
enforcement - all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect
that continue to haunt us.

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans
of his generation grew up. They 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. What's remarkable is not how
many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and
women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way
for those like me who would come after them.

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of
the American Dream, there were many who didn't make it - those who were
ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That
legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations - those young men
and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or
languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future.
Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism,
continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and
women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and
doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness
of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of
white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the
barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is
exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make
up for a politician's own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the
pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to
hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us
of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs
on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too
often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us
from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents
the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to
bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to
simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only
serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, 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 - as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them
anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their
lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their
pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their
futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant
wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum
game, in which your dreams come at my expense. 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
committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban
neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't
always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the
political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and
affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians
routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk
show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking
bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial
injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white
resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle
class squeeze - a corporate culture rife with inside dealing,
questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington
dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that
favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of
white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without
recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns - this too widens
the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck
in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and
white, I have never been so naïve 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 of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have
no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the
burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means
continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of
American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances - for
better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger
aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the
glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying
to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own
lives - by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with
our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may
face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never
succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can
write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American - and yes, conservative -
notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright's
sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is
that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that
society can change.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke
about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was
static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country - a country
that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the
highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black;
Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably
bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen - is that
America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have
already achieved gives us hope - the audacity to hope - for what we can
and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means
acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not
just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of
discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less
overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with
words, but with deeds - by investing in our schools and our communities;
by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal
justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity
that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all
Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense
of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of
black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America
prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less,
than what all the world's great religions demand - that we do unto
others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's keeper,
Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that
common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect
that spirit as well.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that
breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as
spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we
did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We
can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk
about them from now until the election, and make the only question in
this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow
believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on
some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the
race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to
John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking
about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another
one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come
together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the
crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and
white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native
American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells
us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us
are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids,
they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st
century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are
filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care;
who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests
in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a
decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that
once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk
of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem
is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's
that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more
than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and
creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under
the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a
war that never should've been authorized and never should've been waged,
and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for
them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my
heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this
country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after
generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today,
whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this
possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation - the
young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have
already made history in this election.

There is one story in particularly that I'd like to leave you with today
- a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King's
birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia
who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been
working to organize a mostly African-American community since the
beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable
discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they
were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer.
And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her
health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's when Ashley
decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley
convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat
more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that
was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone
at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that
she could help the millions of other children in the country who want
and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her
along the way that the source of her mother's problems were blacks who
were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into
the country illegally. But she didn't. She sought out allies in her
fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks
everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have
different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And
finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there
quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does
not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the
economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he
was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the
room, "I am here because of Ashley."

"I'm here because of Ashley." By itself, that single moment of
recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not
enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the
jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as
so many generations have come to realize over the course of the
two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that
document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

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Thread: Barack Obama , Thread: Campaign 2008