President Obama delivered Wednesday night what one commentator called a "master class in American character." He had been building up to it for years. Indeed, his valedictory address at the DNC about the “American I know” was like a reprise of nearly every major speech he's given since he catapulted on to the national stage twelve years ago in Boston.
Last night, he reimagined his 2004 red state-blue state assertion about our shared commonalities:
I see Americans of every party, every background, every faith who believe that we are stronger together, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, young, old, gay, straight, men, women, folks with disabilities, all pledging allegiance, under the same proud flag, to this big, bold country that we love.
When he asked us to "reject cynicism and reject fear and to summon what is best in us," it was once again an appeal "not to our easy instincts but to our better angels" that he so often invoked in speeches dating as far back as 2005 straight into the kickoff of his first inaugural week in 2009.
When he told us "We're not done perfecting our union," it was a call to continue the work he laid out in his '08 race speech in Philadelphia. "This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected," he said then.
And speaking to the nation last night, he reminded us that the work of perfecting that union is done not by a single person but by "we, the people."
That's who we are. That's our birthright, the capacity to shape our own destiny.
In fact, "We, the people," formed the spine of his 2013 inaugural speech when he lifted it up four times before concluding:
We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths –- that all of us are created equal –- is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.
Barack Obama was already a gifted orator when he entered the Oval Office in 2009—words have always been his domain, his saber of choice. But last night, we watched a man who has grown more fully into the willowy sentiments that have flowed from him so easily throughout the years. It was a speech informed by the reality of waging nasty political battles, passing imperfect laws, and leading a fractured nation. As my colleague Mark Sumner so eloquently noted:
He still has that calmness, that sense of unfathomed depth. But it’s woven through now with the warmth of experience. It’s strengthened by greater confidence. It’s seasoned by both victory and defeat. He still has the same dreams; the same vision of the nation. If anything, that vision is clearer now. We still believe in him, because it is so blindingly clear that he believes in us.
Obama exited the stage Wednesday with a salute to the America he now knows—perhaps, America as it is, rather than as he imagined it to be. But he left behind the same hope he carried on to that stage stiffened by the resolve that comes with experience. We are, after all, a little more perfect than we once were.