If you care to read the speech, Strib has it online for two weeks, before Strib takes it off free access and puts it into their pay-per-view archive.
It probably will be on YouTube, without any future access restriction. Reading it, you can see it is nothing special - YASS - yet-another-stump-speech, but it is the phenomenon, not the words, that matter - although the words had one real message --- that the primary is over and "I define the highground as mine, the lowground his, but beyond that here are my core issues for that definition":
So I'll say this — there are many words to describe John McCain's attempt to pass off his embrace of George Bush's policies as bipartisan and new. But change is not one of them.
Change is a foreign policy that doesn't begin and end with a war that should've never been authorized and never been waged. I won't stand here and pretend that there are many good options left in Iraq, but what's not an option is leaving our troops in that country for the next hundred years — especially at a time when our military is overstretched, our nation is isolated, and nearly every other threat to America is being ignored.
Giving full credit to the man's total honesty, he is not saying change to be delivered, as an actuality, but his small print, the disclaimer below the single word "CHANGE" in large print talks of belief -- believe. Apart from any promise of any actuality being realizable, "you can believe." The solid part of the entire speech is "I am more of a change than my only remaining standing opponent now, McCain, for whom I have great personal respect ..."
Read it:
All of you chose to support a candidate you believe in deeply. But at the end of the day, we aren't the reason you came out and waited in lines that stretched block after block to make your voice heard.
Huh? Come again. That's pure false rhetoric and he knows better. There's more:
You didn't do that because of me or Senator Clinton or anyone else. You did it because you know in your hearts that at this moment — a moment that will define a generation — we cannot afford to keep doing what we've been doing. We owe our children a better future. We owe our country a better future. And for all those who dream of that future tonight, I say — let us begin the work together. Let us unite in common effort to chart a new course for America.
In just a few short months, the Republican Party will arrive in St. Paul with a very different agenda. They will come here to nominate John McCain, a man who has served this country heroically. I honor that service, and I respect his many accomplishments, even if he chooses to deny mine. My differences with him are not personal; they are with the policies he has proposed in this campaign.
Because while John McCain can legitimately tout moments of independence from his party in the past, such independence has not been the hallmark of his presidential campaign.
It's not change when John McCain decided to stand with George Bush 95 percent of the time, as he did in the Senate last year.
It's not change when he offers four more years of Bush economic policies that have failed to create well-paying jobs, or insure our workers, or help Americans afford the skyrocketing cost of college — policies that have lowered the real incomes of the average American family, widened the gap between Wall Street and Main Street, and left our children with a mountain of debt.
And it's not change when he promises to continue a policy in Iraq that asks everything of our brave men and women in uniform and nothing of Iraqi politicians — a policy where all we look for are reasons to stay in Iraq, while we spend billions of dollars a month on a war that isn't making the American people any safer.
If they'd give us the oil as we're after we'd be safer, since their reserves are second greatest behind the Saudis. A change like that would be great but they want to keep their natural resources to assure them a better future, not servitude.
In the end, we know, it is certain now, he's quit Reverend Wright's church over the embarassment of staying there instead:
So it has been for every generation that faced down the greatest challenges and the most improbable odds to leave their children a world that's better, and kinder, and more just.
Well, that's not it. Wright wanted that, he's basically a good man. But it's not the end, only building to the end -
The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. I face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people.
That's getting there, humility, the long road, the American people - it has to end this paragraph, and sure enough -
Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth. This was the moment — this was the time — when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves and our highest ideals. Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.
Bingo! Wright's written out of today's and tomorrow's script. But, bless him, too - no mention needed.
Here is what it was about:
The words did not matter as much as a point in time transitioning toward the general election, and taking down the house, in the hall where the opposition will put on a stodgy stale convention in a few short months. He took down the house, it was his, and they are an attractive and promising pair, the Obamas.
And - At the end, all those people during Obama's triumphant exit from the hall holding up, the CSPAN live broadcast showed it, holding up digital cameras, cell phones with digital cameras included, none of it Made in America. We do make stuff in America, before factories get closed and the jobs end, as Strib reports today, Wednesday, June 4, 2008.
And if anyone doubts that NAFTA has leveled the playing field, there is this.
Pocket change is change we can believe in. While we hold it it's there, when we spend it it's gone. And pocket change has been like that for some time so we've no cause to be skeptical of its delivery not being real. It goes in the pocket, it goes out of the pocket, it cycles that way like a tide ebbs and swells. And a rising tide lifts all boats, they say.
Don't get me wrong - I shudder at some of the tired rhetoric ["the gap between Wall Street and Main Street," "generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment," and, it is always "short months," months in politics never are long, etc.].
Yet, Barak Obama clearly is more appealing an alternative to me than John McCain and I will have less trouble voting for him over McCain than the marginally greater trouble I would have had voting for Clinton over McCain, given how she never delivered on health care reform the first time she had the portfolio as hers, from Bill.
And McCain, well, it could have been Huckabee.
There is that to be said in favor of McCain. However, a few of the Huckster's folks ought to be there, when the GOP gets to convening, and it would have been nicer if party boss Ron Carey had not dumped recently on the Ron Paul people. More of them in St. Paul when the middle-aged-and-older-very-white suits take over the hall from the young, people of color, and the casually dressed; more Ron Paul people then and the show would have promised to have been more entertaining and capable of generating better TV ratings with the viewing public.
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Photo credits, in order, Reuters, GoogleAFP, AP, Strib, Toronto Globe & Mail, and the SUVs pic goes with Strib's linked article.