Obama's speech was brilliant. I was born in 1971; nothing comparable by any politician springs to mind from my lifetime. But, I'm finicky, especially about semantics. So, a couple of tiny points seem worth making.
First, disclosure. I call myself a Pragmatist these days. I lean libertarian, especially on Right To Bear Arms issues, but recognize there are sometimes that markets are imperfect, and there are worse hands than the Government's for power to rest. The main reason I vote Democratic these days is that the Republicans are still marginally competitive, despite the legacies of Nixon (the first of my lifetime, but I read my history) and now President Dubya; I will not vote for a Republican candidate again in my lifetime. I cheerfully consider myself a Peak-Oil "kook". I was raised Catholic, but after arguing with a Biblical Literalist for the last several months have decided I have no more Faith in God. I have Faith in Logic, Mathematics, and that the evident universe can be described with hypercomputational complexity of only cantor ordinal degree (probably zero or one); I merely have Hope in God now.
I was first interested in Obama when he gained an endorsement from Larry Lessig. However, Dodd's adamant opposition to the wiretapping bill gained him my support while his campaign lasted. When the dust from Iowa settled, I looked around at the remaining candidates. Make no mistake, I will not hesitate to vote for Hillary should she succeed in securing the nomination, perhaps because Rush Limbaugh persuades enough Republicans to tactical voting. (Perhaps another diary another day about this sort of thing and the reason for Superdelegates.) I have no doubts that should she be elected, she will be as fine a president as any who have served in my lifetime. But I do not believe she will be a great president. Today's speech proves Obama might be.
News reports say he plans two more speeches this week. If they are of similar caliber to the first, he will at worst only be able to lose the nomination. In that case, Hillary's smartest option will be to accept that her career may end with "merely" a long, honorable, and all but unchallengable service in the Senate, and seek to gracefully stand aside, that she may assure her role as a stateswoman. Now even if he loses, Obama's role as a statesman is assured to history.
But I began this diary with a quibble. It's a great speech, but one idea resembles the union: "This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected." So I'll point it out, in hopes the idea might be perfected.
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.
In the last cause, I feel "believe" and "write" are incorrect. It would be nice if this were true, and this is the dream, but in the cold light of reality, dreams can fade. They need something more durable than mere belief; the shape of the future may yet prove itself harder than any of the tools that can be taken up to engrave it.
But if they cannot be certain to write their own destiny, at least shaping it is within their grasp. And no matter who you are in America, there is always at least the hope of writing the pages of destiny.
Or as Obama appears to have done today, the pages of tomorrow's history.