'America, We Cannot Turn Back. Not with So Much Work to Be Done.'

Denver -- Forty five years ago, I heard the first great speech of my adult life, standing on the Mall in Washington, DC, when Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his great "I have a dream speech." By luck I was at my first political convention when Mario Cuomo described America as a "City on a Hill." Four years ago, in Boston, I looked down from the Fleet Center to see a young candidate I had met weeks earlier when the Sierra Club endorsed him for the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois electrify the crowd -- Larry King walked the corridors afterward muttering out loud to himself, over and over, "My, my, my, my. My, my, my."

So I've been very lucky in the speeches I've heard in person. And I was lucky again last night, at Invesco Field, when that still young U.S. Senator passionately echoed Martin Luther King's call to redeem the American promise. And the entire evening was a reminder of just how much has changed in the past eight years. Obama himself devoted more energy to global warming, energy, and the environment in one speech than the entire 2000 or 2004 campaigns saw, and just before he spoke Al Gore reminded us again that "inconvenient truths matter."

It seemed to me that Obama and the Democrats missed only one opportunity -- they linked him and his biography and this moment to Abraham Lincoln, and they took back from Ronald Reagan the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy. But in his remarks on Bush's foreign policy of bullying without delivering, I did wish that Obama had taken Teddy Roosevelt back from the Republicans -- for surely one way of summing up the Bush administration is to "speak loudly and carry a small stick."

And it was delicious to watch a Sierra Club member and volunteer -- Marsha Shearer -- backstage with Obama in her Sierra Club "New Energy for America" T-shirt.

Follow Carl Pope on Twitter: www.twitter.com/CarlPope

Comments

[mamacat]

Thank you Mr. Pope, for all that you do.
It is indeed encouraging to think that we may soon have a competent President, one who works for the good of all.
As you say, it is also nice to have someone back on the political stage who, when he speaks the English language, reminds us of the great leaders we have had in the past.
Here's hoping that he has a long career in the service of his country.

[T-A]

This is a reply to TINASDAD's post

By your definition of experience, then Gov. Palin is more experienced than McCain. Is that what you intended or are you simply trying to justify your obvious bias against Obama.

You can't argue with a straight face that Obama isn't more qualified than McCain and Palin put together. Obama is smarter, a better leader (to lead such a successful primary to defeat Clinton no less), has a strong following in the Democratic leadership (folks like John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Tom Daschle, etc. - these folks supported Obama - even during the primary againt Hilary - because they believed Obama had the capacity to lead this nation).

It's OK for you to not like Obama for your own personal reasons. But experience can't be one of those reasons unless you're being patently insincere.

[jeanrenoir]

I'm as fervent for Obama as they come, Carl. Too bad Rove just eviscerated him with the Palin pick. You can forget the Arctic Wildlife Refuge and every other dream you have for the environment. Despite her "fight" against Big Oil in Alaska, Palin's obviously the second coming of Norma Rae, now just a mask hiding the return of Cheney to to VP office. I doubt that even a first-class scandal can bring down Palin and McCain now. Palin's like the made-to-order android of Karl Rove's dreams for this election cycle. The more we attack her, just as with Reagan and Bush, the more "hard-working, you know, WHITE" people will hug her to their own ample bosoms. The women even more fervently and bitterly than the men. I hope Obama and Axelrod are such political geniuses themselves that they can figure a way to attack this attack of the fifty-foot woman by Rove. But I'm not smart enough to imagine a solution myself.