(Untitled)

[geekchick]

Transcript of Barack Obama's keynote.

Wow.

If you missed it the first time around, try to watch him when CNN or CSPAN repeats the coverage later tonight.

Comments

[patgreene]

I saw the speech. It would not surprise me at all if he ran for President in eight years or so.

[jasonhollister]

Funny; that was my estimate too.

[marnanel]

I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

This sort of blanket statement just annoys me. Does he really believe that there's no other country in the world where people can be born in poverty in an impoverished third world country and end up at the highest levels of government? Valerie Amos (born to a poor family in Guyana, emigrated to the UK at the age of nine, became a lawyer, then a politician, then Lord President of the Privy Council and Leader of the House of Lords) might disagree.

[mrph]

True. There aren't enough countries where that's possible, but there's certainly more than one. Canada, New Zealand, Australia, probably large chunks of Western Europe...

Having said that, politicians like Obama are probably the best hope for keeping America's position as one of those countries. And it's nice to hear someone celebrate that. Especially when all I'm hearing in the UK right now is tabloid hysteria about asylum seekers and "scrounging" immigrants.

[geekchick]

I doubt he really believes that it would be impossible for such a thing to happen elsewhere; do some of the people he's addressing think so? Maybe, I don't know. It sounds to me like he might just be playing up the "American dream" thing, which is going to go over well at a convention. Given the rest of his speech, that little bit didn't actually even register with me; I was ready to vote for him for president by the end of it.

[anotheranon]

I liked this speech very much, on the grounds that it takes back "patriotic talk" as a province of people other than right-wing Republicans.

But my cynical side adds: I hope he means it.