As I was watching the new Obama commercial about his American story, which reprised some of his biographical film from the convention, my thoughts went back to his acceptance speech.

Granted, at the time it seemed like the politically smart thing for him to scale back the "soaring rhetoric" which was among the many things McCain had been steadily bashing him for throughout all of August.  For Obama to get more pragmatic and specific than inspirational was a shrewd, somewhat unexpected tack for him to take, and I still think it was the right one.  But I think some, especially the viewers who don't count themselves among his stronger supporters, were left feeling a little bit underwhelmed.  Having seen some of his previous speeches, this one didn't seem to hit those emotional high notes with as much resonance as he's really capable of.

But now, seeing this latest commercial and how it provides a refrain from the convention, it causes me to take a step back and look at the longer-term perspective of this campaign, the overarching story from start to finish.  And it seems like Barack has always been seeing the chess board a few moves further ahead than many people, certainly me.  And it makes me wonder if part of the reason he didn't feel it necessary to make his acceptance speech that superlatively uplifting, inspirational, transcendent speech some were expecting to see at the convention was because he knew that he'd be giving that speech a little bit later on...


I. Boston
II. Springfield
III. Philadelphia
IV. Berlin
V. Denver
VI. Washington, D.C.

Future box set?

Earlier today I posted a blog.  It was there when I left home this morning, and now it's lost to the void.

And the same thing happened a few days ago.

WTF?

On October 3rd, 1983, Senator Jesse Helms articulated his opposition to a national holiday for Martin Luther King, Jr. Here is the opening statement:

Remarks of Senator Jesse Helms

Congressional Record,
October 3, 1983,
Vol. 129, No. 130, pages S 13452 through S 13461.

Mr. President, in light of the comments by the Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Kennedy), it is important that there be such an examination of the political activities and associations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., principally from the beginning of his work in the civil rights movement in the mid 1950s until his death in 1968. Throughout this period, but especially toward the beginning and end of his career, King associated with identified members of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA), with persons who were former members of or close to the CPUSA, and with CPUSA front organizations. In some important respects King's civil rights activities and later his opposition to the Vietnam war were strongly influenced by and dependent on these associations.

There is no evidence that King himself was a member of the CPUSA or that he was a rigorous adherent of Marxist ideology or of the Communist Party line. Nevertheless, King was repeatedly warned about his associations with known Communists by friendly elements in the Kennedy Administration and the Department of Justice (DO J) (including strong and explicit warning from President Kennedy himself). King took perfunctory and deceptive measures to separate himself from the Communists against whom he was warned. He continued to have close and secret contacts with at least some of them after being informed and warned of their background, and he violated a commitment to sever his relationships with identified Communists.

Throughout his career King, unlike many other civil rights leaders of his time, associated with the most extreme political elements in the United States. He addressed their organizations, signed their petitions, and invited them into his own organizational activities. Extremist elements played a significant role in promoting and influencing King's opposition to the Vietnam war-an opposition that was not predicated on what King believed to be the best interests of the United States but on his sympathy for the North Vietnamese Communist regime and on an essentially Marxist and anti-American ideological view of U.S. foreign policy.

King's patterns of associations and activities described in this report show that, at the least, he had no strong objection to Communism, that he appears to have welcomed collaboration with Communists, and that he and his principal vehicle, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), were subject to influence and manipulation by Communists. The conclusion must be that Martin Luther King, Jr. was either an irresponsible individual, careless of his own reputation and that of the civil rights movement for integrity and loyalty, or that he knowingly cooperated and sympathized with subversive and totalitarian elements under the control of a hostile foreign power.