"A more perfect union" - Barack Obama's speech on race

Full transcript of Barack Obama's speech on race
Video at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23690567/

Philadelphia - March 18, 2008

"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.

President Clinton's speech About Race Relations

Delivered to The Liz Sutherland Carpentar Distinguished Leadership in the Humanities and Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin - October 17, 1995

Thank you. You know, when I was a boy growing up in Arkansas, I thought it highly -- (applause) -- I thought it highly unlikely that I would ever become President of the United States. Perhaps the only thing even more unlikely was that I should ever have the opportunity to be cheered at the University of Texas. (Applause.) I must say I am very grateful for both of them. (Laughter.)

President Berdahl, Chancellor Cunningham, Dean Olson; to the Texas Longhorn Band, thank you for playing Hail to the Chief. (Applause.) You were magnificent. (Applause.) To my longtime friend of nearly 25 years now, Bernard Rappaport, thank you for your statement and your inspiration and your life of generous giving to this great university and so many other good causes. (Applause.)

All the distinguished guests in the audience -- I hesitate to start -- but I thank my friend and your fellow Texan, Henry Cisneros, for coming down here with me and for his magnificent work as Secretary of HUD. (Applause.)

I thank your Congressman, Lloyd Doggett, and his wife, Libby, for flying down with me. (Applause.) And I'm glad to see my dear friend, Congressman Jake Pickle here. I miss you. (Applause.) Your Attorney General, Dan Morales; the Land Commissioner, Garry Mauro -- I thank all of them for being here. (Applause.)

Thank you, Lucy Johnson, for being here. (Applause.) And please give my regards to your wonderful mother. (Applause.)

I have not seen her -- there she is. And I have to recognize and thank your former Congresswoman and now distinguished Professor Barbara Jordan for the magnificent job you did on the immigration issue. (Applause.) Thank you so much. (Applause.) Thank you. Thank you. (Applause.)

My wife told me about coming here so much, I wanted to come and see for myself. I also know, as all of you do, that there is no such thing as saying no to Liz Carpenter. (Laughter.) I drug it out as long as I could just to hear a few more jokes. (Laughter.)

My fellow Americans, I want to begin by telling you that I am hopeful about America. When I looked at Nikole Bell up here introducing me, and I shook hands with these other young students -- I looked into their eyes; I saw the AmeriCorps button on that gentlemen's shirt -- (applause) -- I was reminded, as I talk about this thorny subject of race today, I was reminded of what Winston Churchill said about the United States when President Roosevelt was trying to pass the Lend-Lease Act so that we could help Britain in their war against Nazi Germany before we, ourselves, were involved. And for a good while the issue was hanging fire. And it was unclear whether the Congress would permit us to help Britain, who at that time was the only bulwark against tyranny in Europe.

And Winston Churchill said, "I have great confidence in the judgment and the common sense of the American people and their leaders. They invariably do the right thing after they have examined every other alternative." (Laughter.) So I say to you, let me begin by saying that I can see in the eyes of these students and in the spirit of this moment, we will do the right thing.

In recent weeks, every one of us has been made aware of a simple truth -- white Americans and black Americans often see the same world in drastically different ways -- ways that go beyond and beneath the Simpson trial and its aftermath, which brought these perceptions so starkly into the open.

The rift we see before us that is tearing at the heart of America exists in spite of the remarkable progress black Americans have made in the last generation, since Martin Luther King swept America up in his dream, and President Johnson spoke so powerfully for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy in demanding that Congress guarantee full voting rights to blacks. The rift between blacks and whites exists still in a very special way in America, in spite of the fact that we have become much more racially and ethnically diverse, and that Hispanic Americans -- themselves no strangers to discrimination -- are now almost 10 percent of our national population.

The reasons for this divide are many. Some are rooted in the awful history and stubborn persistence of racism. Some are rooted in the different ways we experience the threats of modern life to personal security, family values, and strong communities. Some are rooted in the fact that we still haven't learned to talk frankly, to listen carefully, and to work together across racial lines.

Almost 30 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King took his last march with sanitation workers in Memphis. They marched for dignity, equality, and economic justice. Many carried placards that read simply, "I am a man." The throngs of men marching in Washington today, almost all of them, are doing so for the same stated reason. But there is a profound difference between this march today and those of 30 years ago. Thirty years ago, the marchers were demanding the dignity and opportunity they were due because in the face of terrible discrimination, they had worked hard, raised their children, paid their taxes, obeyed the laws, and fought our wars.

Well, today's march is also about pride and dignity and respect. But after a generation of deepening social problems that disproportionately impact black Americans, it is also about black men taking renewed responsibility for themselves, their families, and their communities. (Applause.) It's about saying no to crime and drugs and violence. It's about standing up for atonement and reconciliation. It's about insisting that others do the same, and offering to help them. It's about the frank admission that unless black men shoulder their load, no one else can help them or their brothers, their sisters, and their children escape the hard, bleak lives that too many of them still face.

Of course, some of those in the march do have a history that is far from its message of atonement and reconciliation. One million men are right to be standing up for personal responsibility. But one million men do not make right one man's message of malice and division. (Applause.) No good house was ever built on a bad foundation. Nothing good ever came of hate. So let us pray today that all who march and all who speak will stand for atonement, for reconciliation, for responsibility.

Let us pray that those who have spoken for hatred and division in the past will turn away from that past and give voice to the true message of those ordinary Americans who march. If that happens -- (applause) -- if that happens, the men and the women who are there with them will be marching into better lives for themselves and their families. And they could be marching into a better future for America. (Applause.)

Today we face a choice -- one way leads to further separation and bitterness and more lost futures. The other way, the path of courage and wisdom, leads to unity, to reconciliation, to a rich opportunity for all Americans to make the most of the lives God gave them. This moment in which the racial divide is so clearly out in the open need not be a setback for us. It presents us with a great opportunity, and we dare not let it pass us by. (Applause.)

In the past when we've had the courage to face the truth about our failure to live up to our own best ideals, we've grown stronger, moved forward and restored proud American optimism. At such turning points America moved to preserve the union and abolished slavery; to embrace women's suffrage; to guarantee basic legal rights to America without regard to race, under the leadership of President Johnson. At each of these moments, we looked in the national mirror and were brave enough to say, this is not who we are; we're better than that.

Abraham Lincoln reminded us that a house divided against itself cannot stand. When divisions have threatened to bring our house down, somehow we have always moved together to shore it up. My fellow Americans, our house is the greatest democracy in all human history. And with all its racial and ethnic diversity, it has beaten the odds of human history. But we know that divisions remain, and we still have work to do. (Applause.)

The two worlds we see now each contain both truth and distortion. Both black and white Americans must face this, for honesty is the only gateway to the many acts of reconciliation that will unite our worlds at last into one America.

White America must understand and acknowledge the roots of black pain. It began with unequal treatment first in law and later in fact. African Americans indeed have lived too long with a justice system that in too many cases has been and continues to be less than just. (Applause.) The record of abuses extends from lynchings and trumped up charges to false arrests and police brutality. The tragedies of Emmett Till and Rodney King are bloody markers on the very same road.

Still today too many of our police officers play by the rules of the bad old days. It is beyond wrong when law-abiding black parents have to tell their law-abiding children to fear the police whose salaries are paid by their own taxes. (Applause.)

And blacks are right to think something is terribly wrong when African American men are many times more likely to be victims of homicide than any other group in this country; when there are more African American men in our corrections system than in our colleges; when almost one in three African American men in their 20s are either in jail, on parole or otherwise under the supervision of the criminal justice system -- nearly one in three. And that is a disproportionate percentage in comparison to the percentage of blacks who use drugs in our society. Now, I would like every white person here and in America to take a moment to think how he or she would feel if one in three white men were in similar circumstances.

And there is still unacceptable economic disparity between blacks and whites. It is so fashionable to talk today about African Americans as if they have been some sort of protected class. Many whites think blacks are getting more than their fair share in terms of jobs and promotions. That is not true. That is not true. (Applause.)

The truth is that African Americans still make on average about 60 percent of what white people do; that more than half of African American children live in poverty. And at the very time our young Americans need access to college more than ever before, black college enrollment is dropping in America.

On the other hand, blacks must understand and acknowledge the roots of white fear in America. There is a legitimate fear of the violence that is too prevalent in our urban areas; and often by experience or at least what people see on the news at night, violence for those white people too often has a black face.

It isn't racist for a parent to pull his or her child close when walking through a high-crime neighborhood, or to wish to stay away from neighborhoods where innocent children can be shot in school or standing at bus stops by thugs driving by with assault weapons or toting handguns like old west desperados. (Applause.)

It isn't racist for parents to recoil in disgust when they read about a national survey of gang members saying that two-thirds of them feel justified in shooting someone simply for showing them disrespect. It isn't racist for whites to say they don't understand why people put up with gangs on the corner or in the projects, or with drugs being sold in the schools or in the open. It's not racist for whites to assert that the culture of welfare dependency, out-of-wedlock pregnancy and absent fatherhood cannot be broken by social programs unless there is first more personal responsibility. (Applause.)

The great potential for this march today, beyond the black community, is that whites will come to see a larger truth -- that blacks share their fears and embrace their convictions; openly assert that without changes in the black community and within individuals, real change for our society will not come.

This march could remind white people that most black people share their old-fashioned American values -- (applause) -- for most black Americans still do work hard, care for their families, pay their taxes, and obey the law, often under circumstances which are far more difficult than those their white counterparts face. (Applause.)

Imagine how you would feel if you were a young parent in your 20s with a young child living in a housing project, working somewhere for $5 an hour with no health insurance, passing every day people on the street selling drugs, making 100 times what you make. Those people are the real heroes of America today, and we should recognize that. (Applause.)

And white people too often forget that they are not immune to the problems black Americans face -- crime, drugs, domestic abuse, and teen pregnancy. They are too prevalent among whites as well, and some of those problems are growing faster in our white population than in our minority population. (Applause.)

So we all have a stake in solving these common problems together. It is therefore wrong for white Americans to do what they have done too often simply to move further away from the problems and support policies that will only make them worse. (Applause.)

Finally, both sides seem to fear deep down inside that they'll never quite be able to see each other as more than enemy faces, all of whom carry at least a sliver of bigotry in their hearts. Differences of opinion rooted in different experiences are healthy, indeed essential, for democracies. But differences so great and so rooted in race threaten to divide the house Mr. Lincoln gave his life to save. As Dr. King said, "We must learn to live together as brothers, or we will perish as fools." (Applause.)

Recognizing one another's real grievances is only the first step. We must all take responsibility for ourselves, our conduct and our attitudes. America, we must clean our house of racism. (Applause.)

To our white citizens, I say, I know most of you ever day do your very best by your own lights -- to live a life free of discrimination. Nevertheless, too many destructive ideas are gaining currency in our midst. The taped voice of one policeman should fill you with outrage. (Applause.) And so I say, we must clean the house of white America of racism. Americans who are in the white majority should be proud to stand up and be heard denouncing the sort of racist rhetoric we heard on that tape -- so loudly and clearly denouncing it, that our black fellow citizens can hear us. White racism may be black people's burden, but it's white people's problem. (Applause.) We must clean our house. (Applause.)

To our black citizens, I honor the presence of hundreds of thousands of men in Washington today, committed to atonement and to personal responsibility, and the commitment of millions of other men and women who are African Americans to this cause. I call upon you to build on this effort, to share equally in the promise of America. But to do that, your house, too, must be cleaned of racism. There are too many today -- (applause) -- there are too many today, white and black, on the left and the right, on the street corners and radio waves, who seek to sow division for their own purposes. To them I say, no more. We must be one. (Applause.)

Long before we were so diverse, our nation's motto was E Pluribus Unum -- out of many, we are one. We must be one -- as neighbors, as fellow citizens; not separate camps, but family -- white, black, Latino, all of us, no matter how different, who share basic American values and are willing to live by them.

When a child is gunned down on a street in the Bronx, no matter what our race, he is our American child. When a woman dies from a beating, no matter what our race or hers, she is our American sister. (Applause.) And every time drugs course through the vein of another child, it clouds the future of all our American children. (Applause.)

Whether we like it or not, we are one nation, one family, indivisible. And for us, divorce or separation are not options. (Applause.)

Here, in 1995, on the edge of the 21st century, we dare not tolerate the existence of two Americas. Under my watch, I will do everything I can to see that as soon as possible there is only one -- one America under the rule of law; one social contract committed not to winner take all, but to giving all Americans a chance to win together -- one America. (Applause.)

Well, how do we get there? First, today I ask every governor, every mayor, every business leader, every church leader, every civic leader, every union steward, every student leader -- most important, every citizen -- in every workplace and learning place and meeting place all across America to take personal responsibility for reaching out to people of different races; for taking time to sit down and talk through this issue; to have the courage to speak honestly and frankly; and then to have the discipline to listen quietly with an open mind and an open heart, as others do the same. (Applause.)

This may seem like a simple request, but for tens of millions of Americans, this has never been a reality. They have never spoken, and they have never listened -- not really, not really. (Applause.) I am convinced, based on a rich lifetime of friendships and common endeavors with people of different races, that the American people will find out they have a lot more in common than they think they do. (Applause.)

The second thing we have to do is to defend and enhance real opportunity. I'm not talking about opportunity for black Americans or opportunity for white Americans; I'm talking about opportunity for all Americans. (Applause.) Sooner or later, all our speaking, all our listening, all our caring has to lead to constructive action together for our words and our intentions to have meaning. We can do this first by truly rewarding work and family in government policies, in employment policies, in community practices.

We also have to realize that there are some areas of our country -- whether in urban areas or poor rural areas like south Texas or eastern Arkansas -- where these problems are going to be more prevalent just because there is no opportunity. There is only so much temptation some people can stand when they turn up against a brick wall day after day after day. And if we can spread the benefits of education and free enterprise to those who have been denied them too long and who are isolated in enclaves in this country, then we have a moral obligation to do it. It will be good for our country. (Applause.)

Third and perhaps most important of all, we have to give every child in this country, and every adult who still needs it, the opportunity to get a good education. (Applause.) President Johnson understood that; and now that I am privileged to have this job and to look back across the whole sweep of American history, I can appreciate how truly historic his commitment to the simple idea that every child in this country ought to have an opportunity to get a good, safe, decent, fulfilling education was. It was revolutionary then, and it is revolutionary today. (Applause.)

Today that matters more than ever. I'm trying to do my part. I am fighting hard against efforts to roll back family security, aid to distressed communities, and support for education. I want it to be easier for poor children to get off to a good start in school, not harder. I want it to be easier for everybody to go to college and stay there, not harder. (Applause.) I want to mend affirmative action, but I do not think America is at a place today where we can end it. The evidence of the last several weeks shows that. (Applause.)

But let us remember, the people marching in Washington today are right about one fundamental thing -- at its base, this issue of race is not about government or political leaders; it is about what is in the heart and the minds and life of the American people. There will be no progress in the absence of real responsibility on the part of all Americans. Nowhere is that responsibility more important than in our efforts to promote public safety and preserve the rule of law.

Law and order is the first responsibility of government. Our citizens must respect the law and those who enforce it. Police have a life and death responsibility never, never to abuse the power granted them by the people. We know, by the way, what works in fighting crime also happens to improve relationships between the races. What works in fighting crime is community policing. We have seen it working all across America. The crime rate is down. The murder rate is down where people relate to each other across the lines of police and community in an open, honest, respectful, supportive way. We can lower crime and raise the state of race relations in America if we will remember this simple truth. (Applause.)

But if this is going to work, police departments have to be fair and engaged with, not estranged from, their communities. I am committed to making this kind of community policing a reality all across our country. But you must be committed to making it a reality in your communities. We have to root out the remnants of racism in our police departments. We've got to get it out of our entire criminal justice system. But just as the police have a sacred duty to protect the community fairly, all of our citizens have a sacred responsibility to respect the police; to teach our young people to respect them; and then to support them and work with them so that they can succeed in making us safer. (Applause.)

Let's not forget, most police officers of whatever race are honest people who love the law and put their lives on the lines so that the citizens they're protecting can lead decent, secure lives, and so that their children can grow up to do the same.

Finally, I want to say, on the day of this march, a moment about a crucial area of responsibility -- the responsibility of fatherhood. The single biggest social problem in our society may be the growing absence of fathers from their children's homes, because it contributes to so many other social problems. One child in four grows up in a fatherless home. Without a father to help guide, without a father to care, without a father to teach boys to be men and to teach girls to expect respect from men, it's harder. (Applause.) There are a lot of mothers out there doing a magnificent job alone -- (applause) -- a magnificent job alone, but it is harder. It is harder. (Applause.) This, of course, is not a black problem or a Latino problem or a white problem; it is an American problem. But it aggravates the conditions of the racial divide.

I know from my own life it is harder because my own father died before I was born, and my stepfather's battle with alcohol kept him from being the father he might have been. But for all fathers, parenting is not easy and every parent makes mistakes. I know that, too, from my own experience. The point is that we need people to be there for their children day after day. Building a family is the hardest job a man can do, but it's also the most important.

For those who are neglecting their children, I say it is not too late; your children still need you. To those who only send money in the form of child support, I say keep sending the checks; your kids count on them, and we'll catch you and enforce the law if you stop. (Applause.) But the message of this march today -- one message is that your money is no replacement for your guiding, your caring, you loving the children you brought into this world. (Applause.)

We can only build strong families when men and women respect each other; when they have partnerships; when men are as involved in the homeplace as women have become involved in the workplace. (Applause.) It means, among other things, that we must keep working until we end domestic violence against women and children. (Applause.) I hope those men in Washington today pledge among other things to never, never raise their hand in violence against a woman. (Applause.)

So today, my fellow Americans, I honor the black men marching in Washington to demonstrate their commitment to themselves, their families, and their communities. I honor the millions of men and women in America, the vast majority of every color, who without fanfare or recognition do what it takes to be good fathers and good mothers, good workers and good citizens. They all deserve the thanks of America. (Applause.)

But when we leave here today, what are you going to do? What are you going to do? Let all of us who want to stand up against racism do our part to roll back the divide. Begin by seeking out people in the workplace, the classroom, the community, the neighborhood across town, the places of worship to actually sit down and have those honest conversations I talked about -- conversations where we speak openly and listen and understand how others view this world of ours.

Make no mistake about it, we can bridge this great divide. This is, after all, a very great country. And we have become great by what we have overcome. We have the world's strongest economy, and it's on the move. But we've really lasted because we have understood that our success could never be measured solely by the size of our Gross National Product. (Applause.)

I believe the march in Washington today spawned such an outpouring because it is a reflection of something deeper and stronger that is running throughout our American community. I believe that in millions and millions of different ways, our entire country is reasserting our commitment to the bedrock values that made our country great and that make life worth living.

The great divides of the past call for and were addressed by legal and legislative changes. They were addressed by leaders like Lyndon Johnson, who passed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. (Applause.) And to be sure, this great divide requires a public response by democratically-elected leaders. But today we are really dealing, and we know it, with problems that grow in large measure out of the way all of us look at the world with our minds and the way we feel about the world with our hearts.

And therefore, while leaders and legislation may be important, this is work that has to be done by every single one of you. (Applause.) And this is the ultimate test of our democracy, for today the house divided exists largely in the minds and hearts of the American people. And it must be united there in the minds and hearts of our people.

Yes, there are some who would poison our progress by selling short the great character of our people and our enormous capacity to change and grow. But they will not win the day; we will win the day. (Applause.)

With your help -- with your help -- that day will come a lot sooner. I will do my part, but you, my fellow citizens, must do yours.

Thank you, and God bless you. (Applause.)

When the Gloves Come Off - Jonathan Schell in The Nation

by Jonathan Schell

October 15, 2008

Reality is that which, when you don't believe in it, doesn't go away.
--Peter Viereck, poet and conservative thinker

We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart's grown brutal from the fare.
--W.B. Yeats

"Every tree in the forest will fall," said James McCord, the Watergate conspirator, as he prepared to blow the lid off the cover-up of the scandal, leading to the forced midterm resignation of President Nixon. The phrase comes to mind as one surveys the condition of the United States today. The country's military power is evaporating in failing ground wars in two pulverized, impoverished countries, leaving its recent pretensions to global imperial grandeur in ashes. Its economic power is crumbling daily as its banking system collapses and its instruments of credit seize up in what Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke has told Congress may be a "heart attack." (To which Pope Benedict has helpfully added that the world's financial system is built "on sand," explaining that "only the word of God is the foundation of all reality.") Its constitutional foundations have been weakened to the breaking point by a lawless executive branch and a supine Congress. Its moral authority has been compromised by military aggression and the institution of torture. Its ecological underpinnings (which it of course shares with the rest of the world) are being put at risk by global warming and the entire panoply of harms that the overgrown human enterprise is inflicting on the natural order. (On October 6 a study by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature reported that almost a quarter of mammalian species are now at risk of extinction.) "Change," indeed!--not the kind "we can believe in" or even the kind we "need" that Barack Obama promises but the kind that bears down upon you like a Category 5 hurricane, whether you believe in it or not. Not change but salvage--and salvation--are the need of the hour: rescue we can believe in.

In combination, these crises form a matrix, a kind of tightening steel net, that will condition and confine all future decision-making. Any one of them could easily prove more than a match for the powers of the next president. Yet there is a choice that overlaps and connects all the others and in a sense stands before them: deciding whether the United States, until now surrounded by a deep fog of illusions, will discipline itself to perceive and deal with the world as it actually is or, taking leave of its collective senses once and for all, will make the final plunge into a world of enticing fantasy. That is the most immediate question placed before the voters in the election that is upon us.

Trust is the lifeblood of a democratic politics, just as faith and credit are the lifeblood of market economics. Each can be sustained in defiance of reality: a people can place its trust in demagogues, investors can bet their money on worthless assets. But only for a while. A day must come when the "pitiless crowbar of events" (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn) breaks through the wall. That day has arrived. When, as now, the market system comes to the government begging for rescue, economic credit and political trust are fused. Acknowledging reality will not in itself end the wars, put money back in the banks, lower the price of energy, repair the Constitution or restore the damaged web of life, but it is a necessary condition for addressing any of this work.

Little Facts

It may seem a bit strange, as if in the midst of a ferocious political fight we were suddenly invited to turn ourselves into a tribe of philosophers and try to mount a defense of something as vague as "reality" per se; yet the effort seems required in the face of not just a torrent of deceptions but a multiform insurrection, backed by a tremendous machinery of obfuscation against the very facticity of the world. The appeal of systems of illusion is known to every student of totalitarianism. A fictional world can offer temporary emotional and intellectual comforts that the startling, barbed, always unfamiliar texture of real events cannot supply. The United States is not yet enclosed in the phantasmal world of totalitarianism, but it may be knocking at the gates.

The shock troops of deception are certainly Senator John McCain and his campaign. Their willful, incessantly reiterated distractions, contradictions, distortions and gross lies have by now been widely noted; but their variety and form deserve comment. Several kinds of lies must be distinguished. Some are the traditional kind--lies of concealment regarding matters whose truth is at first widely unknown, as when McCain ads claimed that Obama wanted to teach kindergartners "about sex before learning to read." Others are brazen lies, meaning lies about matters whose truth is already well known, as when McCain's ads charge Obama with imposing "skyrocketing taxes"--whereas anyone who cares to turn on a television can learn that Obama plans to raise taxes only for those who make more than $250,000 a year. His running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, told a brazen lie when she stated that the recently concluded ethics investigation of her attempts to pressure officials into dismissing her former brother-in-law Michael Wooten from his job as an Alaska State Trooper found "no unlawful or unethical activity on my part," adding, "there was no abuse of authority at all in trying to get Officer Wooten fired." In actuality, the report states that she violated the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act by trying to get Wooten fired.

Yet other lies, more brazen still, are ones that immediately contradict one's own statements, as when McCain charged that "Obama...infused unnecessary partisanship into the process" of the economic bailout and then continued to say "now is not the time to fix the blame, it's time to fix the problem." A brazen lie is, in one way, more innocent than a lie of concealment--its falsity is immediately visible--but in another way it is more subversive of truth. Whereas in the case of the lie of concealment the truth can still surface to puncture the deception, in the brazen lie the bolt of truth has already been shot, and no remedy from that quarter is available. The logical next step down this path is what the Republican Party proffers: the roundhouse attack on organizations of information in general, now styled "the media filter." (Even education, another prime source of factual truth, has been cast in disrepute as the province of "the East Coast elite." So strong is this sentiment that Obama's biographical video at the Democratic convention omitted his time at Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he became editor of its Law Review.) To the extent that such efforts succeed, the body of lies is free to grow without check from facts. The political "base," thus immunized, is free to believe anything it likes for as long as it likes, to make things up as it goes along.

A further and more comprehensive step down the same road is the open defense of deception. Thus, to brazen lying is added the brazen advocacy of lying. Republican strategist John Feehery entered this zone when he said that information damaging to vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin was unimportant "because there's a bigger truth out there and the bigger truths are she's new, she's popular in Alaska and she is an insurgent." He crucially added, "As long as those are out there, these little facts don't really matter." Where little facts don't matter, big lies can prosper. However, most startling--though wholly of a piece with the foregoing--is the open articulation and defense of a mode of campaigning in which not just the facts (true statements about reality) but reality is downgraded in principle, as if not merely reports about what is happening in the world but the world itself--the actuality of people's experience and lives--can be thrust aside in favor of fantasy. In this category was the famous statement by McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, that the campaign would no longer be about the "issues" (people's jobs, their health, war and peace, etc.) but about "a composite view of what people take away from these candidates." That was followed by McCain adviser Greg Strimple's statement that "We are looking forward to turning a page on this financial crisis and getting back to discussing Mr. Obama's aggressively liberal record and how he will be too risky for Americans." Is a global economic crisis a "page" that can simply be "turned"?

It would be a great mistake, though, to imagine that the quarrel between the Democrats and the Republicans is a fight between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. The Democrats have allowed themselves to be drawn deeply into the shadow world. The choice between the parties is too often a choice between the greater illusion and the lesser. In this fight, as in the fights to preserve the Constitution and the law, the Republicans are the party of usurpation, the Democrats of abdication. (Together they are well matched, and make a deadly pair.) Indeed, the full capture of the political realm by the propaganda arts has been bipartisan. The iron triangle of pollsters, paid political advertisers and consultants has formed an independent realm of images in which, by common agreement, the prime duties of a candidate are such matters as "defining" the opponent before he defines you, seizing "control of the agenda" and framing a "message" or, more grandiose, a "narrative"--all of which are aimed, whether moving through a land of fact or fiction (or some of both), at winning office.

Meanwhile, the pundit class, unsatisfied with a mere reportorial role yet fearful of expressing opinion outright, presides over a vast realm of "analysis," in which the commentators, sitting behind rows of laptop computers in overdesigned television studios, all too often become so many self-appointed bipartisan advisers to both campaigns--equal-opportunity spin artists. There, the questions asked are likely to be on the order of "Did Sarah Palin beat the low expectations we had set for her in the debate?" or "What must Obama do to pass the 'commander in chief test'?'' or "Will McCain's attempt to energize his base by choosing Sarah Palin alienate independent voters?" or "How can Barack Obama appeal to lower-class white women who voted for Hillary?" They too rarely ask: "Is the United States really heading for 'victory' in the Iraq War?" (as the GOP boldly declares) or "Will the candidates' plans for bailing out the financial system really work?" or "Is a policy of torture morally acceptable?" The upshot is that in the most widely attended media (mostly television), the plight of the United States and the role of a new president in dealing with it must be discussed largely in technical terms. It's as if a fire department, arriving at a burning house, instead of rushing in to save the sleeping children and putting out the blaze were restricted, like so many weather forecasters, to analyzing wind currents, wondering when the second floor will burst into flame or when the neighbor's house will be ignited.

Strong and Wrong

In no area has the Democratic surrender--at once to illusion and the disastrous unleashing of military force--been more abject than in national security policy. The pattern between the two parties was set more than half a century ago, when Republican Senator Joe McCarthy charged that the Democratic administration of Harry Truman had "lost" China and set the stage for the Democrats, fearful of losing another country, to make their catastrophic commitment to the Vietnam War. The keynote of the current round of abdication was certainly the Congressional vote to support the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq. Accused of losing one war, many Democrats felt compelled, some no doubt sincerely but others for a variety of pretexts ("I was voting to take the issue to the UN!"), to sign up for the other one. (Let's try to imagine for a moment how much better a country the United States would be today if Congress had turned down the Vietnam and Iraq wars.) Such have been the terms of the Democrats' enduring dilemma in the face of America's disastrous wars. If they oppose the war, they look weak in the face of the enemy. If, in order to look "tough," they support the war, they look--and are--weak in the face of the Republicans. Or if, like John Kerry in 2004 in regard to Iraq, they support the war and then oppose it, they look like--and are--flip-floppers. Every which way, they look weak. Chronically accused of "softness" on something or other (in the old days Communism, today terrorism), they really are soft in their failure to stand up to their Republican opponents bent on misbegotten wars.

Bill Clinton articulated the Democrats' normally unspoken credo when he said, "When people are feeling insecure, they'd rather have someone who is strong and wrong rather than someone who is weak and right." (The difference is that the Democrats are likely to know in their bones that the war is wrong, whereas the Republicans do not.) Barack Obama has not escaped the dilemma, which persists into this sixth year of the Iraq War. From the start of his campaign, he has advocated an increase in the American military of 92,000 additional troops. An opponent of the war in Iraq from the beginning, he now calls for an increase of two brigades in Afghanistan. It's hard not to believe that the logic here is that if you want to draw down forces in war A (Iraq), you must find a war B (Afghanistan) to step up. Does Obama truly imagine that further militarization of that conflict will lead to its resolution? Isn't it more likely that the current deterioration of the military effort will continue? And if so, isn't there a grave risk that Afghanistan will become Obama's war in the way that Iraq became Bush's war, and with a similar potential to destroy Obama's presidency? And wouldn't it be better to join Afghan's president, Hamid Karzai, who is trying to enlist Saudi Arabia to start negotiations with the Taliban on a political settlement?

At the same time, Obama has sought to outflank McCain on the tough side by calling for hot pursuit of the Taliban into Pakistan, something George Bush is in fact doing. The practice has already led to an exchange of fire with Pakistani troops and looks like the high road to an expanded war. Nor is Obama's promise of withdrawal from Iraq by any means ironclad. After sixteen months, he would leave behind a force of unspecified size devoted to attacking terrorists, training Iraqi forces and protecting American installations. But is this three-pronged mission so very different from the current one? And if Iraq begins to slide toward civil war, as seems all too possible, what will Obama do then? And if that prospect is real, shouldn't he acquaint the public with it now? He has said that he would "reserve the right to pause a withdrawal." But in that case, will the Iraq war, too, become his war? In short, there is good reason to fear that in his eagerness to avoid the appearance of risking "losing" Afghanistan, Pakistan and/or Iraq, he has laid several traps for himself. If he must one day decide to withdraw even in the face of collapse in any or all of those countries, the Republicans will not fail to remind him of his campaign promises of success, and his presidency will be in danger. They're already saying he will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq. Such is the likely price that this Democrat risks for succumbing to illusion in matters of war and peace and failing to acknowledge the full cost that will probably have to be paid for America's military misadventures.

Taking the Gloves Off

As the election entered its final month, the McCain campaign, in one of the more sudden twists in its ever shifting strategy, settled on a phrase to describe what it would do next. It would "take the gloves off," as Governor Palin said to William Kristol of the New York Times. That is, as she put it on the stump, "there is a time when it's necessary to take the gloves off, and that time is right now." Or as she further put it, approvingly quoting a campaign staffer's comments, "OK, let's look at it this way, Sarah: the gloves are off, the heels are on. Let's get to work!" The gloves-off expression has an unmistakable echo in recent history. It was the phrase of choice to describe the Bush administration's programs of torture and abuse. For example, Cofer Black, director of the CIA's counterterrorism center until May 2002, stated to a Congressional hearing in September of that year, "All I want to say is that there was 'before' 9/11 and 'after' 9/11. After 9/11 the gloves come off." He turned out to be referring to the CIA's infamous global program for "disappearing" and torturing detainees in a system of secret prisons, some run by the CIA and some by foreign governments. One thing led to another, and the phrase, together with the torture it opaquely declared, turned out to have a life of its own. In Iraq, by August 2003, a captain in military intelligence had made it known that in the cells of the prison at Abu Ghraib "the gloves are coming off gentlemen regarding these detainees," for "Col. Boltz has made it clear that we want these individuals broken." Soon, the photographs of the horrors of Abu Ghraib flooded the world.

The supposed aim of abusing detainees was obtaining information. But the record shows that misinformation thus obtained was far more important for the course of events than was anything actually learned. As recounted in Jane Mayer's outstanding recent book The Dark Side, in late 2001, Pakistani intelligence captured Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a confederate of Osama bin Laden. Interrogated without abuse by the FBI, he proved an invaluable source of information on Al Qaeda plots but denied knowledge of any connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein or of Iraqi programs of weapons of mass destruction. But at that time there was a keen demand in the highest echelons of the Bush administration to produce just such evidence in order to be able to justify the invasion before world opinion. Al-Libi was taken into CIA custody and sent to Egypt, where the most revolting forms of torture are routinely practiced. "You're going to Egypt!" a CIA officer, in one of the basest moments of American history, screamed at al-Libi. "And while you're there, I'm going to find your mother and fuck her!" In Egypt he was imprisoned in a tiny cage for more than eighty hours and viciously beaten. Al-Libi then discovered that Saddam did indeed have ties to Al Qaeda and programs for weapons of mass destruction. According to a report by the Senate Select Committee in 2006, al-Libi "lied...to avoid torture." Or as he put it to the FBI, "They were killing me. I had to tell them something."

Al-Libi's new testimony quickly flowed up the chain of command to the White House, where it was piped into the vice president's office. From there it made its way to no less august a forum than the United Nations Security Council, where Secretary of State Colin Powell cited al-Libi's torture-induced lies (though without naming him) in his dramatic presentation to the world of the American reasons for invading Iraq. ("A senior terrorist operative," he said, had told interrogators that Saddam had trained two Al Qaeda members in the use of "chemical and biological weapons.") Behind Powell at the UN sat CIA director George Tenet. Behind him, invisible in the shadows of the secret prison system, stood the American-sponsored Egyptian torturers with their instruments of agony.

Yeats understood that fantasy brutalizes the heart. The CIA's torturers demonstrated that the brutalized heart in turn nourishes fantasy. A war was planned. Illusions to justify it were wanted. Torture was one of the chosen means. Here was the destination to which the "strong and wrong" policy finally led. The consequences were of high moment: thousands of American deaths, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, one country smashed, another dishonored. Now in the last weeks of the presidential campaign "the gloves are off" again, fantasy and brutality are mixing in another context and new streams of lies are being pumped into the public bloodstream from the campaign trail. What will the price be this time? More mistaken wars, with their lawlessness, torture and civilian deaths? More immiseration through voodoo economics? Where will the cross-fertilization of delusion and degradation next lead? What will Sarah Palin do with her high heels and her ungloved hands, and to whom? Already a mood of "anger," even "rage," has developed at McCain-Palin rallies, where racial slurs and shouts of "treason" greet mentions of Obama.

The Thin Man

Looking over the wreckage of American policy, it's possible to suppose that the United States of October 2008 is going through what Russia went through in August 1991, the loss of empire. But a better analogy might be the Suez crisis of 1956, when England and France (with assistance from Israel) sought to reassert their imperial roles by invading Egypt, which had just nationalized the Suez Canal. Suez did not so much destroy the British and French empires as reveal that they were already gone. At the time, President Eisenhower exclaimed to Britain's Prime Minister Eden, "Anthony, have you gone out of your mind?"--a question that many people would like to put to the United States just about now. But whereas the Soviet Union simply disappeared, Britain and France of course survived as prosperous middle-power nations. The end of empire did not spell the end of the state. The United States seems likely to remain a country of immense strengths--economic, political, even military--that will survive the collapse of its imperial delusions. Above all, its constitutional system, ravaged yet still standing, offers a means of regeneration of a kind that few other countries possess.

Cyril Connolly once said that inside every fat man there is a thin man struggling to get out. Is Barack Obama (the "skinny guy with a funny name," as he says) that thin man for the United States? Does he stand for the lean, disenthralled, awake America that needs to escape from within the obese, supersized, bewildered giant whose military forces crash through the world, whose ruined credit is dragging down the world economy, whose effluents are choking its own and the world's atmosphere, whose superannuated nuclear arsenal (together with that of Russia) even today threatens the species with annihilation? Obama is an almost preternaturally gifted political man--a kind of Mozart of politics. He seems to possess many elements of stature, even of greatness. His reputation for decency is unblemished. He appears to be remarkably unideological, a true pragmatist--a quality much to be prized in a time when events outrace foresight. He is intellectually agile. He is a writer and speaker of eloquence and originality. He inhabits a degraded public realm with grace. He is an outstanding judge of people and circumstances, if his memoir Dreams From My Father is any indication. (Note that the word "from" in the title, instead of the expected "of," turns a cliché phrase into an interesting one.) He is a good manager--his campaign has been a marvel of skillful administration. But still to be proven are the clarity of his vision and the strength--the "audacity," to use his word--without which his fine qualities will be of little help. Placing himself at the center of the swamp that our political life has become, he has breathed deeply of the narcotic fumes that pervade it. Many of his campaign promises will burden a presidency already destined to have burdens to spare. But his election is a necessity for any decent future for the United States. The fog might begin to lift. It would be a beginning.

Obama, Race and the Presidency - Ari Melber in The Nation

By Ari Melber

January 3, 2008

In America's long struggle for racial equality, 2007 was a paradoxical year. Just as our political system seriously contemplated a black President for the very first time, the Supreme Court declared the end of racial integration policy, halting voluntary local remedies to desegregate public schools under Brown vs. Board of Education. Presented with the rise of Barack Obama and the fall of Brown, most people have focused on the good news.

Many Americans were captivated by the self-proclaimed "audacity" of Obama's January announcement that he was running for President. Obama made it clear he was not running to send a message or to register voters but literally to get elected. His campaign initially worked because the political elites accepted this unprecedented proposition. Reporters took Obama's candidacy seriously from its inception, and the donors did, too. Obama has already secured more than a footnote in history, shattering records for individual contributors to his campaign. Win or lose, he is arguably the first black American to be treated by the political and media establishment as a fully viable presidential contender. It is an achievement that cannot be claimed by any other racial minorities. (Jesse Jackson's campaigns did not attain such standing with the political establishment, despite their significance for many voters.) We should not gloss over this development. It is a meaningful step towards addressing a resilient, uncomfortable American fact: our national power structure has always been, and stubbornly remains, overwhelmingly white, from all forty-three Presidents across history to ninety-five of the one hundred senators serving today.

That segregated power structure was reinforced by the Supreme Court's sharply divided June decision to ban integration programs in public schools. Most educational policies that consider a student's race for the purposes of integration are now illegal. Like the original Brown opinion, this year's decision is not neatly confined to K-12 schools, either. Brown consecrated a new national ambition for racial equality in the public sphere, delegitimizing both explicit and implicit racism in government, and laying a foundation for remedial measures to equalize many other facets of our society. Many critics contend that this case, Parents Involved In Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, augurs a disturbing slide backwards. It bans integration programs, sharply restricts race-based government remedies and sets the stage for future bans on other remedial programs, such as affirmative action, as Justice Stephen Breyer warned.

But will the public really stand for this sweeping attack on Brown's legacy?

Yes. In most of the country, public opposition towards measures to remedy America's history of racial discrimination, from academic recruitment to professional affirmative action, has actually outpaced the conservative court. Even putting aside the South, generally liberal electorates--including California, Washington and Michigan--have passed state referenda completely banning affirmative action. Hostility towards affirmative action runs so deep, in fact, it is a staple of attacks against black political candidates. Senator Jesse Helms perfected coded campaign racism in 1990, with an infamous attack ad darkly juxtaposing his black opponent's face with the text "For RACIAL QUOTAS." Which brings us back to Barack Obama.

Some commentators have latched onto Obama's success as proof for the flawed claim that the United States has completely achieved equal opportunity for all, obviating remedial programs like affirmative action. "Obama embodies and preaches the true and vital message that in today's America, the opportunities available to black people are unlimited if they work hard, play by the rules, and get a good education," writes Stuart Taylor Jr., a columnist for The National Journal (emphasis added). Taylor presents one man's unusual political arc as a universal lesson for all "black children": "Obama's soaring success should tell black children everywhere that they, too, can succeed, and they do not need handouts or reparations." Obama's success is definitely inspirational, but is that because it is an average example or a remarkable exception?

As a politician, Obama is an accomplished black man who knows that some voters still see him, before all else, as "the black candidate." It seems as if commentators either fixate on how his blackness makes his candidacy historic--as I just did--or debate whether he is "black enough." Obama dutifully protests these lines of inquiry, assuring audiences that his qualifications, vision and personal experiences transcend race. This is not only true, it is a political necessity. Obama knows that he is unlikely to win as the "black candidate," let alone the "affirmative-action candidate."

Few other campaigns in recent memory have pressed meritocratic credentials as forcefully as Obama's aides. Today's candidates tend to downplay their Ivy League educations in favor of more humble qualifications. Yet it is rare to hear Obama's history discussed without a reference to Harvard, or his prestigious stint as editor-in-chief of its Law Review. Even when his campaign is not emphasizing it, reporters highlight Obama's education far more than any other candidate's. Take, for example, articles from the major newspapers about the leading Democratic candidates in the first ten months of this year's campaign. Obama's Harvard Law credentials turn up a whopping 178 times--six times the thirty Yale references for Hillary Clinton. John Edwards's law school was only mentioned once, in an article about how he met his wife.

This emphasis is vital to Obama's candidacy. He earned his past success and current prominence, in this narrative, as evidenced by his academic achievement and intelligence. The story line aims to banish the racist thought, lurking beneath our public discourse, that perhaps this candidate succeeded only because of his race. Sometimes it seeps out anyway. During a January appearance on Fox News, columnist John McWhorter offered the baseless claim that "the reason that [Obama is] considered such a big deal is simply because he's black." McWhorter implausibly continued, "If you took away the color of his skin, nobody right now would be paying him any attention."

Such baseless attacks obviously predate Barack Obama. Even the most extraordinarily successful minorities are either attacked for their achievements, or the meaning of their educational and professional advancement is contested. Like other talented, smart and successful black Americans who have broken barriers (including Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice), Obama excelled in an institution that used affirmative action to propel qualified minority applicants. Having proven their mettle as leaders, it is clear each of these figures would excel without affirmative action. And no one knows how their careers would have developed in a society without remedial measures for discrimination. Yet their paths show how the United States has benefited from applying affirmative action in public institutions.

Rice has emphasized how affirmative action gave her an opportunity to prove herself in academia. "I myself am the beneficiary of a Stanford strategy that took affirmative action seriously," she told a Stanford faculty meeting in 1997, and her rise through academia and government embodies the policy's four original rationales: minority students can overcome adversity, excel academically, share their perspectives to enrich a diverse student body and benefit from the requisite training for leadership positions in society, eventually helping to redress the effects of hundreds of years of discrimination. In other words, by pursuing the values of adversity, diversity and redress on campus, universities can both improve their educational offering and advance equality across American society. Americans are decidedly mixed on "affirmative action"--both as a literal program and as a vessel for complex emotions about race--but few would openly challenge those values. Yet those values have not driven the debate for a long time.

In 1978, the Supreme Court struck down a University of California affirmative action program and rejected most of the program's traditional rationales. Adversity and redress were out. Instead, Justice Lewis Powell carved out narrow legal authority for programs advancing "diversity," based on the university's special First Amendment right to foster diverse and open educational environments. "The atmosphere of speculation, experiment and creation--so essential to the quality of higher education--is widely believed to be promoted by a diverse student body," he declared.

The opinion would have profound "discourse shaping effects," as Yale Law School Professor Jack Balkin has written, because advocates of affirmative action could no longer defend the program's legality by citing illegal rationales. So an administrator might support affirmative action because people who overcome adversity have qualities that tests do not reflect, or because redressing a history of racist exclusion enhances the institution's legitimacy, but those arguments were suddenly out of bounds. The courts specifically required "diversity" to justify affirmative action.

Depicting affirmative action solely as a diversity measure not only departs from the program's original purposes. It is also a tough sell. For example, when a 2003 Gallup poll simply asked white Americans whether they "favor" affirmative action, 44 percent said yes and 49 percent said no. When the same poll offered a more detailed choice between college affirmative action "to help promote diversity" or admissions operating "solely on the basis of merit," however, white support for affirmative action plummeted 20 points. Blacks and Hispanics, who favored affirmative action by higher margins, also backed off in this question, with support dropping 21 and 27 points, respectively. Severed from other rationales and pitted against merit, it turns out that even for sympathetic Americans, "diversity" is a drag on affirmative action's validity. Apparently the public imagination prefers bootstrap narratives to the gauzy diversity of Benetton ads.

It took another twenty-five years for the Supreme Court to move beyond its cramped conception of diversity as the only acceptable rationale for affirmative action. In 2003, the Court broadened the legal foundation for the policy. In a five-to-four decision, the Court cited an influential amicus brief from one of the most aggressive proponents of affirmative action, the US military. A group of former Defense Secretaries and Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs explained that beyond the largely intrinsic benefit of diversity, the very legitimacy and efficacy of the military was advanced when its leadership looked like the rest of the enlisted soldiers. The brief declared that a "highly qualified, racially diverse officer corps educated and trained to command our nation's racially diverse enlisted ranks is essential." The Supreme Court largely adopted that view, through Justice O'Connor's majority opinion, touting the importance of diverse national leadership for the entire country:

Universities, and in particular, law schools, represent the training ground for a large number of our Nation's leaders. Individuals with law degrees occupy roughly half the state governorships, more than half the seats in the United States Senate, and more than a third of the seats in the United States House of Representatives. The pattern is even more striking when it comes to highly selective law schools. A handful of these schools accounts for 25 of the 100 United States Senators, 74 United States Courts of Appeals judges, and nearly 200 of the more than 600 United States District Court judges. In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity. All members of our heterogeneous society must have confidence in the openness and integrity of the educational institutions that provide this training.

Thus the Court finally conceded that programs ensuring minorities have access to education and power are important for public legitimacy and redressing past discrimination. After all, the lack of "diversity" among today's leaders is a product of historical discrimination. (The discrimination ranges from the obvious, like voter suppression, to the obscure, like college legacy preferences that function as grandfather clauses for mostly white alumni.) The Court still talked about diversity, since it was the only accepted rationale within the relevant precedent, but it became a vessel for other, underlying grounds that had been pushed off the stage.

This "diversity in national leadership" approach also received an important boost from an unlikely benefactor: George W. Bush.

Liberals and conservatives rarely discuss it, but Bush applied affirmative action to select his cabinet, elevating more racial minorities to senior positions than any administration in American history. That includes, of course, two secretaries of state, (officially the highest-ranking cabinet post), a national security adviser, an attorney general and the secretaries of commerce, labor, transportation and housing and urban development. Contrarians might claim that all those barriers were broken by accident, in a colorblind process that just happened to make history.

Yet the record reveals Bush's deliberate use of affirmative action. Bush went out of his way to find black candidates in a Republican Party that grooms virtually no black politicians for the national stage. (There are no black Republican members of Congress, and only seven percent of black Americans self-identify as Republicans, according to a 2004 study by the Pew Research Center.) Finding qualified black leaders required a rare detour from the GOP's overwhelmingly white, partisan networks. It is no surprise that the President tapped the two American institutions at the forefront of affirmative action, the military and the academy, to select former general Powell and former provost Rice.

Why doesn't Bush get more credit for using affirmative action to build the most diverse cabinet in American history?

He refused to preach what he practiced.

In a conservative twist on "politically correct" culture, Republicans often banish the language of affirmative action even when they practice it. While Bush consciously recruited minorities into some of the most important positions in the United States, he would not admit it. Instead, he spoke out against affirmative action, claiming to advocate only "race-neutral" programs, and thrust his Solicitor General into the odd position of arguing against the President's own policies in the 2003 affirmative action case before the Supreme Court.

The Administration lost, of course, in the decision written by Justice O'Connor. Now she has been replaced by Samuel Alito, who is widely expected to be the fifth vote for banning all affirmative action at the next opportunity. After all, the Roberts Court was not shy about taking the earliest chance to undermine Brown, a unanimous opinion celebrated as a zenith for the Court's civil rights accomplishments. The legal precedents for affirmative action are weaker, stretched between Justice Powell's plurality and Justice O'Connor's retired swing vote. Meanwhile, the political branches offer little solace, since even politicians who use affirmative action often dare not speak its name, and many now stress their support for preferences based on class, instead of race. Of course, class-based affirmative action, like financial-need scholarships, is a vital part of public policy advancing equal opportunity. But it cannot replace measures that directly address our history of legal, political and educational discrimination.

Ultimately, one part of the high public regard for bright, talented successful black leaders like Obama, Rice or Powell stems from public awareness that our country is still struggling to overcome racial barriers. Powell earned his success within a military and a Cabinet that proudly used affirmative action not simply as a benefit for individual "applicants" like him, not only as a "diversity" boost for his peers in military and government circles, but as an extrinsic value for the progress of our nation and the legitimacy of its leadership. As the first top-tier black presidential candidate, Obama has already advanced that progress another step. Yet win or lose, such examples remain too rare, as the first post-civil rights era cohort comes of age. Even Obama's potential election reveals this trend, for his elevation to the White House would leave the Senate without a single black member. We still need affirmative action in college, government and business--animated by race, class and equal opportunity--if we are ever going to reform America's resiliently segregated power structure.

An elitist? I’d rather have a College Professor than a Sports Reporter

Assume for a moment that you are the Chairman of the  Board for a Fortune 500 Company and your company is searching for a new CEO. The following resumes come across your desk:

Education

Applicant 1:
Occidental College, 2 years, Forbes 2008 Rank: 233
BS in Political Science/Minor in International Relations, 1983, Columbia University, 2008 Rank: 10
Columbia is a Member of the Ivy League
Post Graduate: JD, Harvard Law School, US News & World Report 2008 Rank: 2
Academic Honors: President of Harvard Law Review

Applicant 2:

Hawaii Pacific College, 1 semester, Not Ranked in top 569
North Idaho College, Not Ranked in top 569
Matanuska-Susitna College, 1 term, Not Ranked in top 569
BA in Communications-Journalism, 1987, University of Idaho, Forbes 2008 Rank: 275
In 1987 the University of Idaho was a member of the Big Sky Conference
Post Graduate: None
Academic Honors: None

I would stop reading there.  Work experience would be a moot point.  There is not enough work experience in two lifetimes to offset the educational disparity.

But I will go on:

Prior Employers

Applicant 1:
Business International Corporation, 1 year
New York Public Interest Research Group, ~3 years
University of Chicago Law School, Professor of Constitutional Law, 12 Years, 2008 Rank: 7

Applicant 2:
Sports Reporter, KTUU-TV, Anchorage, Alaska (~1 year), Current DMA Rank: 150 out of 210.
Appointed to Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission 2003, resigned January 2004.
Assisted Spouse with Fishing Business (unspecified dates and durations)

Outside Interests

Applicant 1:
Helping those less fortunate; Director of the Developing Communities Project for 3 years. Church based organization provided aid, training and assistance to displaced workers in 8 Catholic Parishes on Chicago’s Southside.

Applicant 2:
Hunting and Fishing
Miss Wasilla, 1984; second runner-up Miss Alaska pageant; named “Miss Congeniality”
Director, “Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service, Inc.”  2003 to June 2005.

Elected Offices

Applicant 1:
Illinois State Senator, 13th district from 1997-2004, 2006 estimated constituents: ~780,000
United States Senator, Illinois from 2004-Present, 2006 estimated constituents: ~12,850,000

Applicant 2:
Mayor, Wasilla, Alaska, 1996-2002., Population (2000 census): 5,469
Governor of Alaska, 2007-Present, 2007 estimated constituents: ~683,400

These resumes do not even begin to compare.  Yet there are people who say Sarah Palin is more prepared than Barak Obama to be CEO of the most powerful country on earth.  Those people are either intellectually dishonest, even to themselves, and/or they put themselves, their egos, their ideology and their possessions before their Country.

There are those who say that Applicant 1 is an elitist and Applicant 2 is more “like them”.  They would like to have a beer with Applicant 2.  Do they know what they are saying?  Do they actually want this country run by some one who is just ordinary folk.

I have a decent education.  I hold a BS from a top 200 ranked University with some postgraduate work.  Former Classmates are accomplished respected Business Leaders, Lawyers and Judges.  There is no one I have ever had a beer with that I believe is qualified to be President.

Personally, I do not want a president who is the same as me, I want a president who is better.  I do not want a president who is ordinary; I want a President who is extraordinary.  I want the best and the brightest to lead this Country not the common and average.

But you say that Sarah is not running for President she is running for Vice-President.

Do you remember William Henry Harrison?