Obama Convention Speech Cuts to the Chase

About halfway through Barack Obama's address to the Democratic Party’s virtual convention on Wednesday night, Charles P. Pierce was thinking that he was listening to a good Barack Obama speech, which was all he really expected to hear, and that would have been fine with him. Then, a little past two-thirds of the way through, the feeling came over me that he was hearing Patrick Henry and Dr. King, harmonizing. His voice did not crack but, rather, it thickened, as though it were struggling with the sheer weight of his words, with the gravity of the warning he was trying to give to the country. It was Barack Obama looking back on the speech that made him famous, the conciliatory address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, from the perspective of his eight years in office and the four years that have followed, and recognizing that the forces that always were arrayed against the sentiments of that 2004 address have won often enough to push the country to the very brink of political devolution. Here’s Pierce on how Obama rose to the occasion in recognizing that the country is on the very brink of political devolution. Pierce was bout halfway through Barack Obama's address to the Democratic Party’s virtual convention on Wednesday night, I was thinking that I was listening to a good Barack Obama speech, which was all I really expected to hear, and that would have been fine with me. Then, a little past two-thirds of the way through, the feeling came over me that I was hearing Patrick Henry and Dr. King, harmonizing. It happened at about this point in the speech.

Because that's what at stake right now. Our democracy.

Obama went on.

Look, I understand why a lot of Americans are down on government. The way the rules have been set up and abused in Congress make it easier for special interests to stop progress than to make progress. Believe me, I know. I understand why a white factory worker who's seen his wages cut or his job shipped overseas might feel like the government no longer looks out for him, and why a Black mother might feel like it never looked out for her at all. I understand why a new immigrant might look around this country and wonder whether there's still a place for him here; why a young person might look at politics right now, the circus of it all, the meanness and the lies and crazy conspiracy theories and think, what's the point?

Well, here's the point: this president and those in power – those who benefit from keeping things the way they are – they are counting on your cynicism. They know they can't win you over with their policies. So they're hoping to make it as hard as possible for you to vote, and to convince you that your vote does not matter. That's how they win. That's how they get to keep making decisions that affect your life, and the lives of the people you love. That's how the economy will keep getting skewed to the wealthy and well-connected, how our health systems will let more people fall through the cracks. That's how a democracy withers, until it's no democracy at all.

And on.

And we can't let that happen. Do not let them take away your power. Do not let them take away your democracy. Make a plan right now for how you're going to get involved and vote. Do it as early as you can and tell your family and friends how they can vote too. Do what Americans have done for over two centuries when faced with even tougher times than this – all those quiet heroes who found the courage to keep marching, keep pushing in the face of hardship and injustice.

And on.

What we do echoes through the generations. Whatever our backgrounds, we are all the children of Americans who fought the good fight. Great grandparents working in firetraps and sweatshops without rights or representation. Farmers losing their dreams to dust. Irish and Italians and Asians and Latinos told to go back where they came from. Jews and Catholics, Muslims and Sikhs, made to feel suspect for the way they worshipped. Black Americans chained and whipped and hanged. Spit on for trying to sit at lunch counters. Beaten for trying to vote.

And, finally...

If anyone had a right to believe that this democracy did not work, and could not work, it was those Americans. Our ancestors. They were on the receiving end of a democracy that had fallen short all their lives. They knew how far the daily reality of America strayed from the myth. And yet, instead of giving up, they joined together and said somehow, some way, we are going to make this work. We are going to bring those words, in our founding documents, to life.

His voice did not crack on these words but, rather, it thickened, as though it were struggling with the sheer weight of his words, with the gravity of the warning he was trying to give to the country. To me, it was Barack Obama looking back on the speech that made him famous, the conciliatory address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, from the perspective of his eight years in office and the four years that have followed, and recognizing that the forces that always were arrayed against the sentiments of that 2004 address have won often enough to push the country to the very brink of political devolution.

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I have no doubt that he still believes every word he spoke in Boston. But, based on what he said Wednesday night, and based on how he sounded when he was saying it, I think that the 2020 Barack Obama would have a lot to say to the 2004 Barack Obama about the fragility of the democratic republic that the latter so celebrated when he was young and hadn’t yet been president. In 2004, Obama gave a Democratic convention a prayer of thanksgiving. In 2020, he delivered a stark, high-pulpit jeremiad, something out of the nation’s birth pangs. In 1775, in the speech that would make him immortal, the slave-owning Patrick Henry began by sounding a similar alarm.

...it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it...

Do we govern or are we governed? The question has never been so stark.

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