Barack’s Dream

Last evening, exactly 45 years after Martin Luther King’s "I Have a Dream" speech, Barack Obama gave the speech of his life.  Read it, watch it, auf Deutsch.

"America, we are better than these last eight years." That line got me thinking about how far off course we have veered as a nation: wrecked cities, needless war, frayed alliances, torture, crumbling infrastructure, hurting families. Are we better than these last eight years?  The next 68 days will show if this is true…

Great reports on the speech in the German press here, here, and here.  The head of the Green Party Delegation in the Bundestag, Renate Künast, saw the speech in Invesco Stadium last night and gave an effusive interview in Der Tagesspiegel.

I found Wolfram Eilenberger’s commentary in Cicero to be quite good:

Es
war ein neuer rhetorischer Stil, den Obama mit der Rede von Denver
suchte und fand: Zu dem bislang dominierenden parteiübergreifenden
Idealismus traten kernig vorgetragene Programmatik und gezielte
persönliche Attacken. Damit ist die Taktik enthüllt, mit der Obama in
den kommenden Monaten gegen McCain zu bestehen gedenkt. In Anlehnung an
den großen Cassius Clay (später Muhammad Ali), lautet sie ganz
offenbar: Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. (With his speech in Denver Obama was looking for a new rhetorical style, and he found it: it was no longer just the soaring idealism that transcended party politics.  It included an outline of substantive policies and forceful personal attacks.  Thus Obama has revealed the tactis he will use in the coming months to beat McCain.  To quote  the great Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) it will be this: "Float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.")