(Paraphrasing) If you want to take the full measure of a man or woman vying for the highest office in the land, don't look at their well-scripted words/actions in the presidential campaign, look at their words/actions spoken/taken BEFORE they stood in the glare of that campaign.
All of us who care about the outcome of the 2008 presidential election in the U.S.A. have of course heard a lot about Obama's early and later history, most notably as a community organizer in the South Side of Chicago, after completing Harvard Law. But I just came across the first of two diaries he posted here at Daily Kos on 30 September 2005, entitled Tone, Truth and the Democratic Party that illustrates why so many of the Clinton machine's lines of attack (and most notably the one that he lacks substance) against him have so dismally failed.
I won't take it upon myself to hack up his very long and thoughtful post into smaller bites, because it deserves to be read in its entirety, other than to excerpt his own Intro:
I read with interest your recent discussion regarding my comments on the floor(1, 2, 3) during the debate on John Roberts' nomination. I don't get a chance to follow blog traffic as regularly as I would like, and rarely get the time to participate in the discussions. I thought this might be a good opportunity to offer some thoughts about not only judicial confirmations, but how to bring about meaningful change in this country.
Maybe some of you believe I could have made my general point more artfully, but it's precisely because many of these groups are friends and supporters that I felt it necessary to speak my mind.
Written almost two and half years ago, the full text clearly shows that Barack is not only an extraordinarily gifted speaker and campaigner, but that he is also endowed with a brilliant, strategic mind, that takes the long view on even the most contentious, "hot button" issues and is willing to go against a strong contrary wind in pursuit of an objective that may only appear paramount to others much farther down the road. Reading this essay I was struck over and over again by how consistent his message and tone have remained, ever since his speech to the Democratic National Convention of 2004, when he first drew notice as a potential presidential contender for the future. At the time, watchig him on TV, I was one of the many who thought to themselves "This guy should be President!" and immediately dismissed the thought ("Ain't never gonna happen!").
Like so many others who have come around to his side in this campaign (I originally wanted Gore, so badly I could taste it before my morning coffee, then hoped for Edwards until he got out, and took a long time to come around to Obama -- it was teacherken's diary about Michelle's Wilmington speech that clinched it for me), I am a baby-boomer whose ideals and hopes were crushed over and over again, until I stopped believing change was possible. Gore, after he re-emerged as a fearless champion of progressive issues, first by backing Howard Dean in '04 and with everything he has done since, seemed like the only one who could even begin to restore my faith in the porcess, IF he ran, and when he declined, I understood that the system was irretrievably damaged and beyond repair.
I was wrong. Gore did posit one caveat to the devastating assessment he gave in The Assault on Reason, and that was that a popular groundswell was necessary to make change happen. It now seems he concluded, in his visionary way, that it wasn't going to happen with him at he helm. I don't know if he foresaw what has happened, but Obama has effectively succeeded in creating the very conditions for the kind of revolutionary change in the public opinion landscape that Gore has been advocating.
That said, I can't wait for this to be over, so that we can have not only Gore, but Edwards, Dean and all the other progressive giants out there fighting for and alongside Barack against McCain to reclaim the heart and soul of America.
Peace!