In the spirit of Obama’s speech on race, it’s important to take seriously and try to reach even his detractors who seem entrenched. We need to take seriously the Far Lefties who are convinced that, "like all politicians," Obama is a greedy, self-serving lackey of special interests. Most people find it difficult to believe that any politician could genuinely care about the sensibilities of all Americans and genuinely respect people with whom he disagreed, and many Clinton supporters believe that this kind of caring is weak and ineffectual.
On the right, people who’ve been attacked whenever someone thinks they’re racially insensitive find it impossible to believe that Obama isn’t a closet reverse racist. Ed Koch, a former mayor of New York, argues that we can't trust Obama because he didn’t leave Pastor Wright's church. This last argument has become the most relied upon attack against Obama.
Consider the alternative opinions of people who knew Obama during each period of his professional/student life: during his community organizing days in Chicago, his time as a law student at Harvard, and when he was a State and then a US Senator.
First consider, the only published negative comment an insider has made about Obama’s community organization work. In Chicago after graduation from Columbia University, Obama joined three white community organizers in what they dubbed the Developing Communities Project (DCP). Only one person could be found who had any thing negative to say about him. Hazel Johnson, a longtime resident, recently accused Obama of stealing credit for the work of the environmental group she runs. "He wants to make himself look good," said Johnson, who claimed Obama assisted her group on other problems with the CHA but not the asbestos issue. Johnson's allegations were disputed by several members of DCP, who said Obama was in the thick of the asbestos protests and they were right alongside. Even if this accusation is true, it seems unusually minor.
Now here’s an obviously positive report that makes the point that Obama is genuinely committed to bringing people together. Here’s a quote from the Chicago Sun Times. [If you want citations, merely cut and paste a quoted section into the Google search box; all of the quotes in this article are on the internet.]
"The Rev. Alvin Love, now DCP's president, was just starting his ministry and wondering how to get his parishioners more involved in the neighborhood when young Barack Obama knocked on his door. Love agreed to Obama's request that he attend a meeting with other clergy, Protestant and Catholic, to lay out their concerns and seek common ground. At the time most of the ministers were white, the Developing Communities Project mostly Catholic," Love says. "Barack said we have to get all stakeholders involved, so he came to the Protestant churches, mostly with African-American pastors. Race? It really wasn't a problem once we put our issues on the table and we saw we were all dealing with the same things. The issues were the same for all of us. I think that probably was the greatest accomplishment. We won some things, but the lasting importance is that he brought us together in a culturally divided community."
Obama has, from the beginning, shown that he truly is about forming broad coalitions. Here’s another quote regarding Sol Alinsky, whose methods and principles were taught at DCP.
"But, although he was a first-class student of Alinsky's method, Obama also saw its limits. It appealed to his head but not his heart. For instance, Alinsky relished baiting politicians or low-level bureaucrats into public meetings where they would be humiliated. Obama found these "accountability sessions" unsettling, even cruel. "Oftentimes, these elected officials didn't have that much more power than the people they represented," he told me."
There is Barack’s unusually empathy, his feeling even for people with whom he disagrees. This level of concern and respect is truly uncommon in community organizers and politicians.
Here are a few quotes regarding his time as an organizer at Harvard Law School. It concerns how he was able to convince people at Harvard to support him for the position of president of Harvard Law Review.
"He did it by convincing a crucial swing bloc of conservatives that their self-interests would be protected by electing him. He built that trust during the same kind of long listening sessions he had made use of in the depressed neighborhoods of Chicago. "He didn't get to be president of Harvard Law Review because he was first in his class," said Richard Epstein, a colleague of Obama's at the University of Chicago Law School, where Obama later taught. "He got it because people on the other side believed he would give them a fair shake."
There is no evidence I could find that Obama is perceived any other way by people with whom he actually had relationships. However, many critics have tried to make the case against him. A common minor criticism is that he inflating his association with the University of Chicago Law School. Some writers have claimed that, in referring to himself as a former "professor," he is aggrandizing his position there. They say he was only a "lecturer." Here are several quotes from the Chicago Sun Times that should help put this criticism in perspective.
A Sun-Times review of student evaluations from Obama's 10 years of teaching part-time at the University of Chicago Law School shows that students almost always rated Obama as one of their top instructors -- except for one quarter in 1997. "Those are tremendous ratings, especially for someone who had a day job," Professor Cass Sunstein said. "We wanted him to join the faculty full-time at various different junctures. That's not a trivial fact. . . . If we want to hire someone, the faculty has to think they're tremendous.
Obama’s actual classification was "Senior Lecturer. The students didn’t call him, "My constitutional law lecturer," of course, because the distinction in this case is so minor. He was regarded by his students and colleagues as a professor, because he performed like one and had the credentials for being one.
Also consider the representative words of one of his students.
"Some professors are just kind of going through the motions with you," Andrew Janis said, "He actually seemed to take everyone's point of view seriously. If he could bring that to bear in the international level with foreign dignitaries and heads of state, I think that would put us in good standing with the rest of the world."
In explaining his ambition to be a different kind of politician, Obama clearly indicates that he is, as he has consistently demonstrated, interested in bringing people together. He says he could best function,
"as part teacher and part advocate, one who does not sell voters short but who educates them about the real choices before them? As an elected public official, for instance, I could bring church and community leaders together easier than I could as a community organizer or lawyer. We would come together to form concrete economic development strategies, take advantage of existing laws and structures, and create bridges and bonds within all sectors of the community. We must form grassroots structures that would hold me and other elected officials more accountable for their actions."
In his eight year Illinois Senate career, Obama again earned his reputation as a uniter. Here’s a quote regarding that period to consider.
"Obviously, we didn't agree all the time, but he would always take suggestions when they were logical, and he was willing to listen to our point of view. And he offered his opinions in a lawyerly way," said Carl Hawkinson, the retired Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee. "When he spoke on the floor of the Senate, he spoke out of conviction. You knew that, whether you agreed with him or disagreed with him."
His former colleague at the University of Chicago, Sunstein, was in a good position to put Obama’s way of operating in the US Senate in perspective. Mr. Sunstein summary view is that Obama is "a terrific listener who goes wherever reason takes him." The point? He’s not an ideologue. To make his point, Sunstein tells a story about a conversation he had with Obama about an important Bush initiative. Sunstein says,
"This was a pretty amazing conversation, not only because of Obama's mastery of the legal details, but also because many prominent Democratic leaders had already blasted the Bush initiative as blatantly illegal. He did not want to take a public position until he had listened to, and explored, what might be said on the other side."
Sunstein adds that Obama is a "genuinely independent mind." And he says that "the Obama we know is no rhetorician; he shines not because he can move people, but because of his problem-solving abilities, creativity and attention to detail."
Perhaps these observations can be used to help create a compelling reaction to the Wright flap. At present, Obama mostly argues that he didn’t leave Pastor Wright’s church because he was personally attached to Wright. Wright officiated at his kids’ baptisms and more. Many have argued that this response to criticism is not convincing. Hillary herself has implied that Obama should have left the church after hearing some of Wright’s incendiary words. Obama adds that people knew he was going to retire, that he was angry because of horrendous injustices that occurred in the past, and because he was kind of crazy at times, like a sometimes crazy old uncle.
His critics don’t accept those explanations, and, more telling, they don’t speak to them. They only state that he should have left or at least should have chastened Pastor Wright. They don’t speak to the twenty year, family-like relationship. They don’t put themselves fully in his shoes as "nephew" and deeply involved church community member when they argue that he should have left. They don’t have enough information to realize, as many who know Wright have said, that Wright is, in the main, a constructive community leader.
Perhaps Obama’s critics can get to know him better through other people who have known him and worked with him. They can get to know that he is sort of the opposite of a closet racist, as his speech on race suggests. He truly is committed to not only helping but deeply empathizing with blue collar workers and right-leaning victims of PC name calling.
A black pastor in Oakland who heard Obama’s speech on race, a pastor who knows and admires Wright, said that Obama’s speech affected him. It called on him to be more of a uniter and less of a divider, to speak from his higher self more. That does seem to be the impact Obama’s been trying to have throughout his professional and student life. In the process of vetting Obama, his critics can help offerring their critiques in the spirit in which Obama is calling all of us to consider.