"In an announcement speech Saturday of soaring rhetoric, on a bitterly cold day..."

The Politico: The Audacity of Barack Obama
By: Roger Simon
February 10, 2007 12:05 PM EST



SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - - The very audacity of it, the very unlikelihood of a black man becoming president of the United States is now the driving force of Barack Obama’s campaign.

In an announcement speech Saturday of soaring rhetoric, on a bitterly cold day, to a large and shivering crowd, Barack Obama called what he was doing an “improbable quest.”

“If you will join me in this improbable quest, if you feel destiny calling, and see as I see, a future of endless possibility stretching before us; if you sense, as I sense, that the time is now to shake off our slumber, and slough off our fear, and make good on the debt we owe past and future generations, then I'm ready to take up the cause, and march with you, and work with you,” he said.

“Together, starting today, let us finish the work that needs to be done, and usher in a new birth of freedom on this Earth.”

Which is pretty audacious talk. But it was also pretty audacious to announce in Springfield, home of Abraham Lincoln, and in the shadow of the Old State Capitol, where Lincoln gave his “House Divided” speech in opposition to slavery.

Obama addressed it directly, again stressing the difficulty of what he was attempting:

“For that is our unyielding faith -- that in the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it. That's what Abraham Lincoln understood,” Obama said....

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0207/2703.html

Not mentioning race, but with the implication of it everywhere. Just a very smart move.

what is so audacious about a BLACK man being President?

:wtf:

...compared to some of the other candidates. And how quickly he rose to be in this position.

Out of all the current Presidential contenders, this is a list of how long they've all been in politics

Barack Obama - 10 years in politics (and counting)
Sam Brownback - 10 years in politics (and counting)
Mike Huckabee - 10 years in politics
Dennis Kucinich - 10 years in politics (and counting)
Tom Vilsack - 8 years in politics
Rudy Guiliani - 7 years in politics
Tom Tancredo - 7 years in politics
John Edwards - 6 years in politics
Bill Richardson - 4 years in politics (and counting)
Mitt Romney - 4 years in politics!!! (became Governor in 2003 and wasn't re-elected for a 2nd term...before he was a Governor, he was a "businessman")

(thanks to an unknown DU'er for this info, I can't find the original thread now)

And that's really who we have to compare him to.

you left out Hillary who counting her time as first lady has a lot more, and McCain who has been in the Senate for over 20 years. i'm an Obama guy, but fair is fair...

has Giuliani.

I didn't read it as anything to do with experience. You made an earlier comment on another thread that you thought the media wouldn't take Obama to task. Guess again. They rip everyone to shreds, in subtle and not so subtle ways. Get ready, cause the media backlash cometh. To think otherwise is to be naive.

I lived through '04 and saw my candidate who I actively campaigned for in NH get marginalized and creamed by the media, so this time there's not much that will surprise me.

Barack is smart, I'm sure he's ready for this too.

got from a sermon by his pastor.

In this instance, Audacity doesn't mean "scandalous," but "boldness."

"I was really struck by that phrase, because I think that one of the things that characterizes this country in particular is the sense that we can overcome…the sense that no matter how difficult our circumstances, we have the boldness to say, 'We can do better.'"

so I could watch this. Clearly he hit it out of the ballpark from all reports. I love the peroration quotes from Obama himself. Lovely, majestic yet sprightly rhythm. And as a fan of such rhetoric, I love the gumption he had to use the word "slough" (sluff) as in "slough off our fear" -- that's layin' it down "Old School" indeed! :)

that's what I had to do, because my cable feed sucked on C-SPAN and the TiVO couldn't capture it for me. I watched online.