Barack Obama: My Kind Of Democrat

by hilzoy

Barack Obama gave a really wonderful speech at the commencement of Knox College. Excerpts:

"As a servant in Rome, you knew you’d spend your life forced to build somebody else’s Empire. As a peasant in 11th Century China, you knew that no matter how hard you worked, the local warlord might come and take everything you had—and you also knew that famine might come knocking at the door. As a subject of King George, you knew that your freedom of worship and your freedom to speak and to build your own life would be ultimately limited by the throne.

And then America happened.

A place where destiny was not a destination, but a journey to be shared and shaped and remade by people who had the gall, the temerity to believe that, against all odds, they could form “a more perfect union” on this new frontier.

And as people around the world began to hear the tale of the lowly colonists who overthrew an empire for the sake of an idea, they started to come. Across oceans and the ages, they settled in Boston and Charleston, Chicago and St. Louis, Kalamazoo and Galesburg, to try and build their own American Dream. This collective dream moved forward imperfectly—it was scarred by our treatment of native peoples, betrayed by slavery, clouded by the subjugation of women, shaken by war and depression. And yet, brick by brick, rail by rail, calloused hand by calloused hand, people kept dreaming, and building, and working, and marching, and petitioning their government, until they made America a land where the question of our place in history is not answered for us. It’s answered by us.

Have we failed at times? Absolutely. Will you occasionally fail when you embark on your own American journey? You surely will. But the test is not perfection.
The true test of the American ideal is whether we’re able to recognize our failings and then rise together to meet the challenges of our time. Whether we allow ourselves to be shaped by events and history, or whether we act to shape them. Whether chance of birth or circumstance decides life’s big winners and losers, or whether we build a community where, at the very least, everyone has a chance to work hard, get ahead, and reach their dreams."

Then, after discussing previous generations and the choices they faced, he talks about the challenges of globalization, and about competing with people the world over for jobs.

"Like so much of the American story, once again, we face a choice. Once again, there are those who believe that there isn’t much we can do about this as a nation. That the best idea is to give everyone one big refund on their government—divvy it up by individual portions, in the form of tax breaks, hand it out, and encourage everyone to use their share to go buy their own health care, their own retirement plan, their own child care, their own education, and so on.

In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society. But in our past there has been another term for it—Social Darwinism—every man or woman for him or herself. It’s a tempting idea, because it doesn’t require much thought or ingenuity. It allows us to say that those whose health care or tuition may rise faster than they can afford—tough luck. It allows us to say to the Maytag workers who have lost their job—life isn’t fair. It let’s us say to the child who was born into poverty—pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And it is especially tempting because each of us believes we will always be the winner in life’s lottery, that we’re the one who will be the next Donald Trump, or at least we won’t be the chump who Donald Trump says: “You’re fired!”

But there is a problem. It won’t work. It ignores our history. It ignores the fact that it’s been government research and investment that made the railways possible and the internet possible. It’s been the creation of a massive middle class, through decent wages and benefits and public schools that allowed us all to prosper. Our economic dependence depended on individual initiative. It depended on a belief in the free market; but it has also depended on our sense of mutual regard for each other, the idea that everybody has a stake in the country, that we’re all in it together and everybody’s got a shot at opportunity. That’s what’s produced our unrivaled political stability.

And so if we do nothing in the face of globalization, more people will continue to lose their health care. Fewer kids will be able to afford the diploma you’re about to receive.

More companies like United Airlines won’t be able to provide pensions for their employees. And those Maytag workers will be joined in the unemployment line by any worker whose skills can be bought and sold on the global market.

So today I’m here to tell you what most of you already know. This is not us—the option that I just mentioned. Doing nothing. It’s not how our story ends—not in this country. America is a land of big dreamers and big hopes.

It is this hope that has sustained us through revolution and civil war, depression and world war, a struggle for civil and social rights and the brink of nuclear crisis. And it is because our dreamers dreamed that we have emerged from each challenge more united, more prosperous, and more admired than before.

So let’s dream. Instead of doing nothing or simply defending 20th century solutions, let’s imagine together what we could do to give every American a fighting chance in the 21st century."

And then he imagines. Read the whole thing; it's extraordinary. (h/t TPM Cafe)

Comments

[lily]

Obama's autobiography, Dreams of my Father, is fascinating. He is a gifted writer as well as a man who has successfully forged an indentity out of a very mixed cultural background. He's my pick for 08. wouldn't it be cool to have a President named Obama?

[Gary Farber]

"wouldn't it be cool to have a President named Obama?"

Second to President Dooku, though.

[cleek]

wouldn't it be cool to have a President named Obama?

i'd like a smart, level-headed president no matter what his name.

but maybe you have more faith in the GOP than i do. the Barak Osama flyers practically write themselves...

[katherine]

his aides also actually get back to me when I write indignant constituent mail. That's a first. Couldn't believe it.

Still only my second favorite Senator from Illinois however.

[Kevin T. Keith]

He's so good it's unsettling. He seems to reach this level of clear-sighted rhetorical excellence every time he opens his mouth. I rarely wonder if anything or anyone is "too good to be true", because most people and most things just aren't very good to begin with. But with Obama, despite all the evidence that he really, truly means it, I can't keep from asking "Is he for real?"

[bob mcmanus]

He gives a good speech. He votes like a DINO.

[Bruce Baugh]

As Bob says. He gives some of the best speeches any Congressperson has in my lifetime. But he votes awful, and he joins in the Dean-bashing bandwagon, and otherwise fails to keep the respect his speeches earn from me.

[bob mcmanus]

Yeah I have been reading the stuff over at Jeanne's Body and Soul. I am glad somebody linked, my browser's a mess tonight.

He voted for Gonzalez and the bankruptcy bill. And more. Am I supposed to forgive and forget, nobody's perfect, the Senate works in mysterious ways, especially for freshman, don't be such a jerk, Bob?

Co-opted, compromised, small sacrifices for influence and power, eventually we will get something very important from Obama. Blah. Blah. We still have Gonzalez and the bankruptcy bill.

Not my kind of Democrat.

[kateherine]

He voted against Gonzales and against the bankruptcy bill on both cloture and final passage.

I've definitely run into this rumor once before on this site and several times on other sites. Where's it coming from?

[Nate]

Yeah, I remember seeing at the time, on both, that Obama was one of the few Democrats to vote against Gonzales, and against the bankruptcy atrocity.

Somebody running some kind of whispering campaign? Such things have been known to happen in politics, once in a blue moon.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

Strange whispering campaign to be coming from the left about a Democrat.

In any case it was a great speech so few people today know how to give a good speech--even Clinton I think got by on the pure force of his weird charisma more than his good speechmaking skills--but I can't agree with him on globalization. It isn't a zero sum game. Globalization is the reason we have been able to do so well for the past two or three decades. See especially NAFTA and the 1980s and 1990s WTO. I'm all for retraining people when their jobs become obsolete, but I'm absolutely not for stopping progress and economic advancement to keep their jobs from becoming obsolete. Helping people keep up with the quickly changing world is a good value--trying to keep the world from changing through protectionism is not.

The idea that an ownership society is just social darwinism is especially ugly. It used to be called giving people a stake, and it was central to labor ideas in the 1950s and 1960s.

I don't think we need to harken back to the days of crappy Ford cars.

[Gary Farber]

"Strange whispering campaign to be coming from the left about a Democrat."

Oh, sure, that never happens. Democrats are famously monolithic, and, after all, only consist of the "extreme" left. Bill Clinton was always beloved by the left of his party, after all, as was Jimmy Carter. And John Kerry.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

Well no, but the American left isn't usually so subtle as to bother with a whispering campaign. :)

[CaseyL]

Read the speech, Sebastian.

The idea of "giving people a stake" is fine, but it's not what Bush's ownership society is about. What kind of "stake" is it, when you're one merger or corporate cost cutting away from losing a job that already doesn't pay well enough for you to confidently plan for retirement, your kids' education, or even a decent vacation every year?

What kind of "stake" is it, when you're 55 and you're told to get job training - for a job that pays maybe 2/3 of what you were making, and could also go south without notice? What kind of "stake" is it, when the execs ask more and more for less and less, renege on pensions and lay off workers by the thousands, and cut R&D and customer service to the bone, to make that quarter's revenue targets - still get their multi-million dollar bonuses and golden parachutes, even as they leave a wrecked company behind them?

What kind of "stake" is it, when Bush wants to phase out SocSec even as companies stop funding pensions and salaries stay stagnant so people can't save more for retirement even if they had the discipline to do so?

What kind of "stake" is it, when people stuck under $30,000 a year can't get daycare assistance, can't get tuition assistance, can't find affordable housing, can't get good education for their kids or healthcare for their families, and are one medical emergency away from bankruptcy?

Bush's 'Ownership Society" is Social Darwinism. It's a hearkening back to the Gilded Age, a de facto aristocracy defined purely by wealth. It's Grover Norquist's wet dream of drowning government in the bathtub: no investment in new technologies, no safety nets, no CDC, no NIH, no FEMA, no NOAA, no federal regulation of industry, no Hubble, no space program (except for military applications); nothing that helps the commonweal. Nothing that creates new technologies, which would create new industries and new job opportunities. (But lots of corporate welfare, subsidies for businesses with powerful lobbies, and a tax code that concentrates wealth upward.)

Read the speech. It's not about protectionism. It's about what made America pre-eminent in the world. The American Drean means more than fantasies of eternal military supremacy and an economy where the dice are loaded in favor of the already-haves.

[Bruce Baugh]

Katharine and Nate: I am very happy to be wrong in this case! I was relying on sources I find usually reliable, but will rummage for antecedents and spread corrections. Thank you!

[bob mcmanus]

"I've definitely run into this rumor once before on this site and several times on other sites. Where's it coming from?"

Good gracious, I am in grievous error, and apologize. I will try to determine from where my misconceptions were derived. I appreciate the correction. It is good news.

Well then. Go Obama.

[liberal japonicus]

"I've definitely run into this rumor once before on this site and several times on other sites. Where's it coming from?"

I don't want to jump on bob and John Thullen, but Katherine may be thinking of this thread.

If Katherine had heard it elsewhere, here was this piece by David Sirota which seems to have the kind of raw material that would set up something like this.

[KCinDC]

Yikes, Bob. I hope you can remember the correction this time. (Of course my memory isn't what it once was either.) Internalize the good news, and get that erroneous information out of your head, before it comes out again in another two months.

[bob mcmanus]

"Yikes, Bob. I hope you can remember the correction this time."

Indeed. I cannot deny that I tend to look for the dark cloud within every silver lining, think the worst of people whenever possible, and think every day I don't die in my sleep a good day, tho likely worse than yesterday.

I am too cynical.

[Gary Farber]

"I am too cynical."

As Mike Nichols reminded us last week: "Cheer up! Life isn't everything!"

[felixrayman]

Globalization is the reason we have been able to do so well for the past two or three decades

We?

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

Unless you are in Africa, which for the most part has not participated in globalization and is damaged by one of the remaining protected markets in both the EU and the US (agriculture) 'we' almost certainly includes you and everyone reading on this website.

[felixrayman]

'we' almost certainly includes you and everyone reading on this website.

Fact free ideology.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

Don't be so hard on yourself felixrayman.

[ral]

Bob, something to cheer you up...

I get up each morning and dust off my wits
Open the paper and read the obits
If I'm not there, I know I'm not dead
So I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed

"My Get Up and Go Has Got Up and Went", words trad, melody Pete Seeger

[felixrayman]

Don't be so hard on yourself felixrayman.

Wow that's the best you have? Later.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

You offer a content-free criticism, you get a content free response. :)