A Week Later

A week after Barack Obama's speech the Washington Post has four different columns about the speech and it's effect and consequences in today's paper.

Robert Novak looks at the problems it may be causing him with super delegates.

David Broder comments on the presidential bully pulpit aspect of the speech.

Bomani Armah asks Barak to show us his "white side" in a satirical look at the speech and the "one drop rule".

Jonetta Rose Barras writes on why she's no longer in the camp of the Rev. Wrights of the world after spending a few decades believing it was the correct path.

Novak makes the point that since the speech Obama's numbers have fallen in Pennsylvania, as some of the undecided white vote decided he was just "another black candidate" based on his speech, not a trancendant one.

Having watched any number of white people be "tossed under a bus" because of racially inept statements, they evidently don't get why Obama can't disown his minister like Hillary was forced to disown Geraldine Ferraro.

This, according to Novak is going to cause a superdelegate problem for Obama, as the start looking at electability once again. They'll wonder if the Republican Attack Machine won't roll Rev. Wright back out come the fall, and beat Obama to death with the good Reverend's words.

Broder's piece is about the substance of Obama's speech and it's delivery. He believes it helped Obama paint himself as a person, like Reagan (sorry Democrats), who can use words to effect change and rally people behind him.

There's little doubt that Obama is a great orator who's come up with top notch speech writers. For him to get to the place Broder puts him though, he has to get past the problems Novak pointed out.

Barras' piece is long, but explains her journey from a person who saw everything in the country as separate for blacks and whites to someone who realized that working together works better. It kind of reminded me of the David Mamet piece in the Villiage Voice, "Why I am no Long a Brain-Dead Liberal".

She doesn't think, by a long shot, that racially everything in the country is perfect. Instead she seems to have found that while imperfect, it's not nearly as bad as the Rev. Wrights, Jesse Jacksons, and Al Sharptons believe it to be. She seems to have stepped out of the comfort zone of those folks, ventured into the "real world" and found out that there are whites, asians and hispanics that aren't afraid to help, all you have to do is ask. And evidently she found enough to give her some hope that all isn't lost as Wright seems to think.

Armah takes a tongue in cheek look at Barack Obama's heritage and tells him it's time to start showing off his "white side". He's gained his black "street cred", and now needs to remind people, by posing for pictures with the other half of his family that he's white, too. Read the comments to see how many foaming at the mouth liberals don't get satire, even when it's pointed out in above the title line.