Without advance text or notes, the 44th president of the United States did yesterday what he should have done a year ago in the struggle that will decide the fate of his tenure.
On the eve of their vote on the unholy mess that health care reform has become, Barack Obama took moral leadership of his party and, in a “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” moment, invoked Lincoln for his theme: “I’m not bound to win, but I’m bound to be true. I’m not bound to succeed, but I’m bound to live up to what light I have.”
To the confusion of critics and more objective commentators alike, the President relied less on rational argument than an appeal to the hearts of Washington wheelers-and-dealers who are held in rock-bottom opinion poll esteem by Americans they represent.
Abandoning his hopeless quest for bipartisanship, he reminded fellow party members why they were there: “Something inspired you to get involved, and something inspired you to be a Democrat instead of running as a Republican. Because somewhere deep in your heart you said to yourself, I believe in an America in which we don’t just look out for ourselves, that we don’t just tell people you’re on your own, that we are proud of our individualism, we are proud of our liberty, but we also have a sense of neighborliness and a sense of community and we are willing to look out for one another.”
With empathy for their “tough vote,” Mr. Obama echoed Frank Capra’s Jefferson Smith’s urging them to live up to “what Man’s carved out for himself, after centuries of fighting. Fighting for something better than just jungle law, fighting so he can stand on his own two feet, free and decent, like he was created, no matter what his race, color, or creed.”
As this President spoke, patriots outside with a Tea Party sense of “neighborliness” and “community” were spewing racial epithets and gay slurs at lawmakers.