naked candidate

Tonight Barack Obama set the bar high. He had a structured outline of what he needed to communicate to the American people and had calculated in what his opponents might offer in terms of a rebuttal. It was a brilliant first move. Rest assured, the battle for the White House began tonight.

Outside of my own self-adulation, I use the term ‘brilliant’ sparingly. Here is why I believe Obama’s speech was brilliant, sans hyperbole. He began and ended his speech deep within the patriotic confines of the very Constitution which bestows upon each of us explicit rights. How could a Republican, even a fork-tongued one such Rove, undermine the ideals of the foundation of our rights?

Here is what I mean. Obama talked early in his speech about American promise. This would equate to American pride or Rah-Rah USA in GOP-speak. He linked it, necessarily so, to the concept of individual responsibility. He has taken two core concepts from Republican thought, Jingoistic Flag Waving and Get the Government Out of My Face-ism, and presented them in a reasonable format entirely at ease with a liberal audience. He proclaimed that our country has a history of greatness and is something to be proud of but part of that pride comes from individuals doing their part for the greater good.

The Republican attack manual will require McCain, at some point next week, to accuse Obama of being another big government liberal. Obama used his speech tonight to acknowledge that he has some big ideas, even going so far as to say that:

America, now is not the time for small plans.

He did this but made certain it was within the context of personal responsibility:

Ours is a promise that says government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves.

He lays out that we should have the kinds of freedoms we consider essential, to make our own lives, to engage in a free and open market, but that there is an element of personal responsibility there that will be required of each of us. We are individuals but we ‘rise or fall as one nation.’

This clearly hearkens back to Kennedy asking us to ask ourselves what we can do for our country. We have a responsibility as a citizen to treat one another with respect, conduct business responsibly, to parent our own children and then our government, in turn, can focus on the things which are beyond our means.

As I was listening to him, the Preamble to the Constitution began running through my mind:

We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America

These are the words of a young nation, ill at ease with a centralized form of government, agreeing to come together to do the things beyond the means of the individual: provide defense, insure justice, promote general welfare. Senator Obama is asking of us nothing more than our founding fathers asked – be an individual, be responsible and be comforted knowing the government will only step in to handle that which you cannot.

How do even the most rabid attack-yderms criticize a candidate for echoing the thoughts of Madison and the rest of the brave people who gave birth to our great nation? It was a stroke of brilliance – patriotism, individual accountability and government programs wrapped together in the pursuit of a more perfect union.

This was merely the backdrop though, a preemptive shot across the bow of all the Repub’s foaming at the mouth, desperately hoping to keep their powder dry. Obama, while demonstrating the tie between his ideas and those of our founders, also talked about righting our most recent history of failures, mostly those of Bush. Within the framework of discussing how we can work together to fulfill our promise, he described the way our government is broken.

Again, this anticipates a standard rebuttal from the GOP, accusing Obama of being big government, but he assuages those fears one might have of the government by saying the problems we have today are not necessarily the product of government, but rather of a government broken by the mismanagement of its principles by Republicans such as Bush, Cheney and McCain. He highlighted some of the successes of Clinton’s term and then contrasted them against the abysmal administration of George W. Bush. He even gets to reemphasize our American pride when he chides Bush and company by saying:

America, we are better than these last eight years.

He refuses to allow the idea of patriotism to be the sole domain of Republicans, as they would have us believe. This will be an important point towards the end of his speech.

Once he established that our current government is broken he wasted no time in pointing out that John McCain, though a good man and a war hero, has lined up with Bush to push through these broken policies over 90% of the time. McCain the man is to be respected but it is part of our individual duty to call into question his judgment and the decisions he has made. By straying from the Bush flock less than 10% of the time, McCain represents nothing in terms of a solution to our current troubles.

Obama then turned directly into the heart of darkness, the vaunted domain McCain claims as his own: National Security. Obama knows that if he has a weakness against John McCain it is national security. McCain has cut his chops throughout his career on the fact that he is a war hero. Obama turned the argument from McCain’s service in Vietnam to McCain’s judgment in more current affairs:

For while Sen. McCain was turning his sights to Iraq just days after 9/11, I stood up and opposed this war, knowing it would distract us from the real threats that we face.

By demonstrating that McCain’s service record will not be the ‘decider’ but we will have to rely on his judgment and that his judgment took us away from the real enemy and landed us in a quagmire called the Occupation of Iraq, Obama demonstrates that McCain’s security credentials are perhaps overrated. The real enemy is still at large and McCain, to the bloodthirsty cheers of the GOP faithful, extolled his willingness to follow bin Laden to the gates of Hell but Obama points out that bin Laden was actually in a cave and McCain chose to leave him there.

Obama tonight refused to give McCain a free pass on security credentials merely because McCain was a POW. His service is admirable but it will be his judgment upon which the safety of our country relies and that judgment has been lacking. Obama framed the national security debate in these terms:

That’s not the judgment we need. That won’t keep American safe. We need a president who can face the threats of the future, not keep grasping at the ideas of the past.

This also marked a shift into a subtle attack on John McCain. Obama began focusing on moving forward, on taking American promise into the future, and as he was doing so he cast McCain as a relic. McCain is a war hero, but those days are behind him and now he is just another Washington insider making bad decisions. By aligning McCain with Bush and the failed policies of the last eight years, when the discussion shifts to the future there is a stark contrast between what McCain represents, broken government, and what Obama represents, American promise.

Obama then returned to patriotism and, as I mentioned earlier, he states that ‘patriotism has no party.’ He framed the upcoming election in terms of civil debate and civil disagreement in which neither party should challenge the other’s character or patriotism. Obama insisted that:

We all put country first.

He again denies McCain one of the few tricks he has left, abject patriotism. Obama gave a moving talk about soldiers, regardless of party, fighting and bleeding together. They fight as Americans. We are all Americans. We all put our country first. By offering up this vision of unity he also sought to mitigate the polarizing topics of abortion, gun control and same sex marriage. All three of these will be targeted by the GOP but again Obama took the preemptive shot.

He conceded people do not agree on abortion but asked that surely we can all work together to reduce unwanted pregnancies. This is entirely reasonable. Then he pointed out that rural hunters may have a different view of guns from inner-city families but certainly we can all work to keep AK-47’s out of the hands of criminals. Who would argue with that? Lastly, he mentioned there are varying opinions on same sex marriage but we should all insist that this is no ground for discrimination. He took three very polarizing topics and gave people on each side a reasonable common ground.

He then went one step further and anticpated another attack. Obama clearly stated:

I know there are those who dismiss such beliefs as happy talk…And that’s to be expected. Because if you don’t have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare voters.

Obama knows that people will say he is pie in the sky hopeful, but just because an idea is novel does not mean it will not work. We are to expect grave fear talk from the GOP starting tonight, I am sure.

Before coming back to his Constitutional beginning, Obama made a key point in his speech. He rejects the idea that this election is a referendum on Barack Obama but insists it is about the American people. It is all the people who worked for Obama and who worked for Clinton. It is about all the people who want a better life and can’t see it right now with the way things are working. It is about all the folks facing a dead end but believe there is something better. This election is not about one man or one idea but is about all of us working together.

And suddenly, there we are. He is ending his speech, focusing on the future and fulfilling the American promise first dreamed up by Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison and letting each of us know that we too have a part to play. We are part of that promise. We are a key to tomorrow. We have the ability, working together, to change our nation and then change the world and never have we seen that change so necessary as it is today.

It was never about him. It was certainly never about McCain. It is we the people of the United States of America – working together to form a more perfect union.

Brilliant.

God bless America.