Obama, the day after

On the drive home from work yesterday, M and I listened to NPR’s Melissa Block interview Barack Obama on the eve of his address before the Dem convention. We’d heard of Obama, of course, even before the Jack and Jeri Ryan show derailed his Republican opposition for the open Senate seat in Illinois. Still, we don’t live in Illinois, and so this was the first time we’d had a chance to hear him speak. He was captivating. We were impressed by his blend of passion and reason, and by a sense of conviction that frankly surprised us both. We are not accustomed to sensing conviction in politicians. When the interview was over, M exclaimed, “Let’s make him president!” I felt the same way - just terribly impressed. And this was hours before Obama’s speech.

We had the schedule of convention events wrong and so missed his speech the first time around, but I was able to catch it online a couple of hours later. The visual feed was sluggish and lagged behind the audio, which came through loud and clear. This had an odd benefit in that I was forced to focus on what Obama actually said, as opposed to my being swept up in the emotion of the audience. All of the country is reacting to Obama’s performance with (to flog an overused phrase) shock and awe, rippling all along the political spectrum. Jeanne D’Arc at Body and Soul framed that reaction succinctly here:

Chills. It has been a long, long time since a political speech brought me to tears, but this one did it.

As I read other commentary around the Web today and listened to reactions from various media-types, I sensed that Obama tapped into a desire felt by a vast number of liberals and progressives: the desire to hear the case for compassion articulated with moral force and without apology. If Howard Dean invoked the latent and frustrated energy of many Democrats, then Obama gave that energy a needed and (again) moral purpose.

Circumstance forced me to focus on the words rather than the visual. Maybe this is why my reaction is a touch cooler than that of some others. I came away thinking that it was a good speech. A pretty good speech, considering that it offered many goals but no tools for reaching them. Still, that’s the nature of a sermon, and of keynote addresses. I don’t know that I can be clubbed into calling the speech better than the Sermon on the Mount (as seems to have happened to poor Kevin Drum). The odd thing is that I was more impressed listening to Obama in interviews aired just before the convention. He’s my age, forty-two years old (old for a wide receiver but not even in his prime as a politician), and yet there was something about him that seemed, well, old-school. I couldn’t help but be reminded of the figures of the 1960s civil rights movement. The sense of grave purpose from that period - the sense of mission - combined with a precise articulation.

The convention speech was good. But I have the feeling that he can do better. Much better. He will gain experience in his new job (and if I was head of the Illinois GOP organization, I wouldn’t bother trying to dredge up an opponent for Obama after last night), and that experience will inform his vision and goals. It should be interesting even to watch.

Before people rush out to print “Obama in 2012″ yard signs, it would be wise to recall what the man said of himself in an interview: he is a work in progress. We have an idea of what kind of senator he would like to be, but we have yet to see what kind of senator he will be. Obama’s great value right now is as a standard bearer for ideals that might easily have been abandoned, and as a beacon to African Americans who until now have been less than convinced of the virtues of the party. There is a lot of work to do, and the year 2012 will take care of itself.