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Obama Channels Langston Hughes (Which John Kerry Was Too Chickenshit To Do)

That was the flat-out best political speech I have heard in my lifetime. No, nothing messianic about Obama: It's just that he's the rare politician who doesn't insult the American public by pretending that our complicated world is simple. And, damn it, the man can write a speech. The sheer poverty of the Democratic Party's rhetoric over the past few years has often made me want to cry in frustration. Obama manages the near-impossible: He turns a tricky and potentially damaging story into a teachable moment, and he does it with eloquence, too.

Below, by the way, is a Langston Hughes poem Obama seems to be channeling—listen carefully to his speech and you'll hear echoes. A great and moving poem. (And there's an ironic back story here, too, which I wrote about a couple of years ago: For a short moment in the summer of 2004, Democratic nominee John Kerry briefly hit upon a decent campaign slogan, "Let America be America again," a phrase inspired by the Hughes poem of the same name. But the right quickly attacked, using Hughes' 1930s flirtation with communism to discredit the poet, the poem and any phrases or sentiments inspired by it. Does that sound like a familiar strategy? Cf. "Jeremiah Wright."  Kerry—who's no Barack Obama—disowned the slogan in about 10 seconds flat.

I'm glad we finally have someone who can reclaim the sentiments, if not the slogan. Anyway—here's an excerpt from the poem (with a link to the whole thing):

Let America be America Again - (Langston Hughes, 1938)

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me).

(Read the rest of the poem here.)