Okay, my headline was slightly inaccurate. What I really meant to say was that Axelrod should be thanking Terry, Keyes, and all of the others who allowed Obama to score a major PR triumph w/ his speech at my alma mater. Round 1 of the looming confirmation fight over Obama's first SCOTUS nomination was clearly won by our side yesterday.
One of the more astounding aspects of Obama's career as a national pol has been the repeated attempts of the GOP to brand a fundamentally moderate establishment-oriented leader as some sort of dangerous radical. He has been charged w/ being a "socialist" who "pals around w/ terrorists," and his wife is purportedly ashamed of her own country. The fact that he has surrounded himself w/ establishment figures like Biden, Rahmbo, Summers, Geithner, and HRC is ignored. The New Yorker cover that drew so much controversy essentially depicted the First Couple that many Goopers want Americans to see.
Obama's main triumph yesterday, accordingly, was to decisively rebut that caricature. He hailed the late Cardinal Bernardin, and he heaped effusive praise on ND's living legend, Fr. Hesburgh. He spoke about potential areas of common ground on the thorny issue of abortion. Best of all, he was enthusiastically received by the vast majority of the assembled throng.
4 aspects of the speech, in particular, stand out:
- Once again, Obama effectively used his Basketball Jones to ingratiate himself w/ an audience. Referring to the Bookstore Basketball Tournament that has been a campus fixture for almost 40 years was a stroke of genius. As I've noted here before, the fact that 2 of Obama's most surprising breakthrough states (IN and NC) in 2008 are both major hoops hotbeds was not a coincidence.
- Obama visibly fired a shot across Cardinal George's bow yesterday. When a president calls a former archbishop of his hometown "saintly" and studiously avoids mentioning the current archbishop, he is making an obvious statement. Obama clearly wishes to appeal to the Bernardin wing of the Church, and he just as clearly recognizes that there is no point in his attempting to appease the George wing. While the latter wing, sadly, clearly holds sway in the hierarchy, the 2008 election returns indicate that the former wing still largely holds sway in the pews.
- While Fr. Hesburgh is now 92, there is every indication that he played a behind the scenes role in yesterday's events. Obama's lengthy recounting of Hesburgh's civil rights history clearly reflected that fact. The picture of current university president Fr. Jenkins and Obama holding up a framed photo of Fr. Hesburgh and MLK showed that fact even more.
- The contrast between the reception Obama received in the Joyce Center and the protests outside worked very much to his advantage. The protesters, many of whom had no affiliation w/ the university, ended up looking largely hysterical. An incumbent president gave a calm, measured, and reasoned speech to a highly appreciative audience. He made the protesters look small, ineffectual, and a little crazed by doing so. In retrospect, Axelrod should thank CNN, Faux, and the other MSM outlets that gave the protesters so much airtime.
Yesterday was a very good day for Obama, for Notre Dame, and for all of those who hope that we can truly change the utterly warped terms of political debate in this country. There have already been times (e.g. w/ his 180 on the torture photos) when the prose of Obama's governing has failed to live up to the poetry of his speeches. There will, inevitably, be other times when he fails to do so in the future.
That poetry, however, can take this country back to places that it visibly left during the last 28 years in general and in the last 8 in particular. There is an expansiveness and a large-mindedness to Obama's approach that was clear for all to see yesterday. Hopefully, he will be able to use that approach to great effect in the coming SCOTUS confirmation battle and in other political fights to come.