Obama's Lincoln Moment

That is the title given to a column in today's LA Times written by media columnist Tim Rutten. He compares favorable Obama's speech to Lincoln's "House Divided" speech during the 1858 Senatorial campaign.
Rutten makes a number of excellent points in this must read column. One of those points concerns the stature of a speech that could have been merely damage control, but which may become a speech of a lifetime. In this speech, as Rutten points out, Obama speaks of the divide between black and white and the need to move forward. He also notes Obama's theological interpretation of America's original sin that stained the Constitution, a document he has taught and loves.

Obama did what he had to do, unequivocally repudiating Wright's extreme rhetoric. But what was truly radical about his analysis was his implicit demand that black and white Americans accept the imperfection of each other's views on race. Embedded in such acceptance is the seed of that "more perfect union" toward which this country -- unquestionably great but itself imperfect -- must strive.

It was a concept that Obama subtly invoked near the beginning of the speech by pointing to the fact that although the Constitution "was stained by the original sin of slavery," the "answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution -- a Constitution that had at its 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."

Indeed, Obama has called us to get beyond the status quo and continue the journey toward perfecting that union that binds us together as a nation.

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