The Bosque Boys

With apologies to those of you who have heard me on this before:

The 1986 film, Hoosiers, opens on a dark and lonely road on the verge of dawn. Off in the distance, two headlights drive toward us in the night. Black is giving way to gray and soon the sun rises over a two-lane highway. As rays of sunlight break through the clouds, we watch a series of shots from various angles tracking the mid-century American sedan cruising purposefully by cornfields, barns, silos, country stores, gas pumps and boys playing basketball.

Driving down country roads lined with crossed-top telephone poles and decorated with bright-colored fall leaves, the car stops at a crossroads with a church prominent in the background. After a momentary pause, the driver proceeds. Has he found the right path?

INDIANA, 1951

Norman Dale has driven through the night to get to the one-blinking-stop-light town of Hickory, Indiana, where he has anxiously agreed to coach a basketball team at a high school with an enrollment of 64 students. Standing in the tradition of a thousand small-town schools built all over the United States during the first half of the twentieth century, the campus fits perfectly within the period of the film; but to our modern eyes, the old school is an anachronism.

"You're not the new coach?" asks Myra Fleener. She is strikingly pretty in a mature teacherly way--but she is all business. "I was expecting someone younger." Her glance is all-knowing and unapproving.

Later, she observes accusingly: "A man your age comes to a place like this, either he's running away from something or he has nowhere else to go." She is spot-on.

She watches him warily as he moves on up the stairs to find his old friend, Cletus, the principal who has sent for him.

"Norman Dale? I hardly recognized you," Cletus says.

It's been a long time since their days at the teacher's college. "I appreciate the opportunity," Norman says. "You've got a clean slate here," Cletus assures him.

Early on, Norman Dale remains a mystery. Mostly, we know that he is here and eager for "one last chance." Eventually, we discover that Dale had led a college team to a national championship twelve years earlier before the NCAA barred him for life for misconduct.

His rival for the Hickory coaching job wonders: "I don't know why Cletus drug your tired old bones in here."

Why? This is a story about regeneration and forgiveness. The tag line for the film: They needed a second chance to finish first. Dale is merely the first in a series of characters who are in need of redemption.

Dale enlists the help of the town drunk, Wilbur "Shooter" Flatch, who lives in a cabin in the woods and is something of a basketball oracle. Shooter is also the father of one of Dale's players, who sees his dad as a hopeless embarrassment. "When is the last time someone gave him a chance?" Dale asks. Pushed to get clean and sober, Shooter mounts an unsteady journey back to respectability; like most of us in the real world, he remains a work in progress throughout the film.

Dale soon finds that the entire town (less Myra Fleener) believes that the key to the season will be enticing Jimmy Chitwood to play with the team. By most accounts, Chitwood is the best school-boy basketball player any of these rabid fans have ever seen. But in the aftermath of a series of personal tragedies, Jimmy has withdrawn from the community and has lost his love for game.

Dale does not push Jimmy, and he encourages the fans to be patient and appreciate the current team "for who they are--not who they are not."

But basketball is the civic religion in Hickory, and they are hungry to break out of their long history of mediocrity. Ironically, the community seems determined to resist any changes to its basketball orthodoxy. They are devout believers in the zone defense and shooting the basketball at every opportunity. They are skeptical and hostile to Dale, a peculiar and perplexing prophet of a new system.

Even his old friend Cletus has his doubts: "I'm trying hard to believe you know what you're doing."

After the rocky start on the court, and increasing consternation from the townspeople, the citizens call a town meeting to decide the fate of the embattled coach. The situation looks dire for Dale. Cletus has taken ill and can no longer offer him protection. Myra Fleener, now acting principal and starting to warm to Dale, calls for the crowd to give him another chance. But the throng clamors for his dismissal.

We are told that twelve legions of angels stood at the ready to rescue the Savior during his time of misery. In keeping with the divine plan, the suffering Christ never issued a call for celestial assistance. In the case of Norman Dale, Jimmy Chitwood intercedes of his own accord. Jimmy has had a change of heart. Dale has won him over with his style and sincerity. Jimmy will rejoin the team, if the town agrees to keep the coach; they are only too pleased to make Jimmy happy.

From there on, it is nothing but net. Success. Enthusiastic cheering crowds. Even the coach’s former tormentors come around.

Myra Fleener and Norman Dale, at a stage in life where they have reason to believe passion has passed them by, find one another and experience personal regeneration.

The team reaches its potential and makes a brilliant run into the playoffs, culminating with a come-from-behind win in the state championship game against a big-city powerhouse.

Most importantly, Coach Dale connects with his humanity, happily coming to understand that his love for his players is much greater than his prodigious desire to win.

More than anything else, Hoosiers is a story of hope and possibility. In the midst of our failure, there is hope for redemption, growth, love and meaning. No matter where we are in life, we are people with potential. We should take great comfort from the knowledge that we are people perpetually in the process of becoming.

Originally posted for Easter Sunday one year ago.

Writing on Forbes.com, Rich Karlgaard asserts that the Barack Obama address this week was "A Speech For The Ages."

Karlgaard writes:

"As a Republican who will vote for John McCain in November, I watched Barack Obama's Philadelphia speech with awe."

"On Tuesday Obama, whose momentum was evaporating in the heat of his pastor scandal and poor Pennsylvania poll numbers, did what he had to do.

"He did more than that, actually. He stepped to the plate and swung for the fences. Obama gave the best, straightest talk on American race relations ever heard from a national politician."

Karlgaard chastises conservatives for reacting through partisan lenses, seeing only the flaws (and sometimes inventing ones that are not there) in the monumentally forceful oration. He is right to the extent that the Speech seemed to polarize political partisans (along, not surprisingly, partisan lines) into either praising the speech as one for the ages (Gettysburg-like for some) or castigating it as a vapid, disingenuous act of political desperation.

Conservatives should admit that the Speech had elements of uncommon greatness. It occurs to me that those who ignore the sublime elements in the address are likely blinded by their desire for it to be a disaster.

Having said that, Obama boosters should admit that the inherently campaign-centered pronouncement had its limitations.

He showed brilliant eloquence in addressing and framing vexing questions in a breathtakingly honest and insightful way, but what about the answers? If LBJ liberalism was truly the remedy for America's problems, they would have been solved for forty years now.

He needs some new ideas...

In effect, candidate Obama gave two speeches:

One in which he soared to unique rhetorical heights, articulating a nuanced (and ultimately optimistic) comprehension of racial misunderstanding and mistrust in American.

This element was incredibly compelling (and we seem to know now that he had been crafting that speech for some time--which makes sense; components of it certainly seemed well considered).

On Tuesday, I read it before I watched it--and I loved it. Then some of the instantaneous analysis and reaction from the conservative bloggers started rolling in--and I wondered if it was not quite as good as I first thought. Later, after repeatedly re-reading the text and watching a replay on C-SPAN, I decided it was just as powerful as I initially believed--with one caveat:

It does drag when he gets to solutions.

Once again, what is he advocating? While marvelous and exhilarating in part, the Speech proved, in the end, unsatisfying.

Where was the beef?

Let us be honest with ourselves. We were all impressed with his direct talk on race. Why? Because that brand of frank talk is so rare when we discuss race in this nation. On the other hand, it is not actually hard to utter a few obvious truths--it is merely dangerous.

Generally, we are not receptive to honest assessments and complicated thinking in re race and history and culture. Honest men publicly take on race at their own peril. Ask Shelby Steele, Thomas Sowell, or Clarence Thomas.

Moreover, if Obama is so brave and honest, why not talk about Jena, Louisiana, with the same honesty and understanding for all parties? Or his own appeal? He seemed to have little reluctance in speaking about his white grandmother. Can we expect the same objective analysis regarding Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton in the days to come?

The Speech was good. But it was a highly charged political affair designed to save a candidacy. There were elements, if delivered in a less vulnerable predicament, which might have initiated a constructive discussion on a vital topic. But, in the context of the moment, the Speech compares better with a Bill Clinton or Richard Nixon desperately fighting to preserve viability in the furious chaos of a media feeding frenzy. The great speeches are never delivered in the midst of a political campaign under fire. Try to name one.

Disappointingly, Obama may have had a great speech on race in him, but he gave it up to save himself.

A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

~~Constitution of the United States,
Bill of Rights, 2nd Amendment

New York Times Supreme Court reporter, Linda Greenhouse, wrote on Wednesday:

"A majority of the Supreme Court appeared ready on Tuesday to embrace, for the first time in the country’s history, an interpretation of the Second Amendment that protects the right to own a gun for personal use."

On at least one level, this is an astonishing turn of events.

The High Court has avoided this issue for the last sixty-nine years.

On the other hand, this new cohort of intellectually fierce and robustly intrepid conservatives could hardly rule otherwise.

Granted, the sentence structure of the Second Amendment is curious; notwithstanding, based on the syntax and the historical evidence, it is extremely difficult to argue that the "right to bear arms" applied only as a collective, militia-bound freedom.

As Chief Justice Roberts suggested in the oral arguments, if the language regarding "keeping and bearing arms" was merely subordinate to the "well-regulated militia," mentioning "the people" seems completely superfluous.

This is problematic. The Constitution itself, and the ten amendments that follow, are spare in style, not indiscriminately garrulous.

Are "the people" and a "well-regulated militia" synonymous? Unlikely.

Are "keep" and "bear" merely rhetorical flourishes that mean the same thing? Couplets added to make the document more poetic? Doubtful.

Justice Antonin Scalia pondered the connection between a "well-regulated militia" and "the security of the state." For what purpose was the militia "necessary" to the security of the people? Primarily, to protect liberty from tyranny. For the framers, an armed citizenry equaled an important safeguard against the accumulation of too much power in the hands of tyrants.

Justices Anthony Kennedy and Samuel Alito also raised the notion of self defense within the context of original intent and the frontier culture of the eighteenth century.

For a conservative, the plain meaning and intent of the amendment is clear enough: the Second Amendment offers a fundamental protection to citizens who wish to possess and use firearms, preventing Congress (or any other branch of the government of the United States) from infringing on this right.

Slam dunk.

The Catch? The Irony?

In District of Columbia versus Dick Anthony Heller , the actions of the federal government are not at issue; rather, the Question is "whether the Second Amendment forbids the District from banning private possession of handguns...."

Heller asks the federal government to interpose itself between local authority (Washington, DC), derived legitimately through the will of the local electorate, and an American citizen, Dick Heller, who petitions the Court to protect his individual right under the Constitution to own a gun.

So what? Isn't this the way it is supposed to work?

Yes and No.

It is the way things have worked since the early-to-mid twentieth century.

However, the Bill of Rights, initially, only protected citizens and states from the federal government.

Some Examples:

From the beginning, the federal (or national) government could not establish a national religion, but the individual states could--and did (the last state to disestablish, Massachusetts, sanctioned a state-supported church for more than four decades after the ratification of the First Amendment).

The national government could not abridge free speech or freedom of the press--but the states could; there was no absolute or practical right to advocate abolition in the ante bellum South. That is, the feds were not empowered to protect individual speech rights in any given state.

Constitutional protections and protocol involving trials, evidence, and prosecutions applied to federal courts--but state courts were free to enact their own procedures.

These were days of true federalism, dual sovereignty, or shared authority, between the state and federal governments.

What happened?

And the war came. And the Fourteenth Amendment followed, which guaranteed all citizens "equal protection" under the law. That is, the federal government assumed (or, more accurately, eventually came to assume) a new role as ultimate defender of the very same individual rights enumerated originally as strictly proscriptions against federal abuse. This expansion of the federal mission, extending the Bill of Rights to the states, and empowering the national government as the agency of enforcement, is commonly called incorporation.

What happened then?

The rights revolution ensued: think Brown, Miranda, Gideon, etc.

Conservatives, often reluctantly and usually not without complaint, generally, have acceded to incorporation as the new reality, accepting the good with the bad.

The Good (for example): the success of the Civil Rights Movement, unthinkable without an activist judiciary.

The Bad (for example): Roe v. Wade and Griswold, which went so far as to incorporate an unenumerated right found in a "penumbra, formed by an emanation."

While a few ultra conservatives have called for an amendment to restore the Constitution to its pre-incorporation form, this view usually falls outside of the mainstream of judicial conservatism. For example, none of the conservatives on the current Supreme Court (not even the self-styled "originalists") advocate "restoration," and it is extremely doubtful that a nominee of that particular philosophical persuasion could ever be confirmed by the Senate today.

Having said that, incorporation is a bone in the throat of conservatism--as it seems an integral component of the increasingly boundless activist court and the antithesis of judicial modesty.

Significantly, one of the issues in Heller is incorporation. If the Court finds gun ownership to be a fundamental individual right guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, what then? The justices will have the authority (under the precedent of incorporation) to defy the will of the majority in Washington, DC, expressed through their elected representatives, and institute a new set of rules by judicial fiat.

Is that a conservative decision?

Was the original intent of the framers to allow a federal court to overrule the clearly expressed will of a local entity?

It is an interesting conundrum. Conceivably, the high court might very well vindicate a basic and obvious right important to modern conservatives, while simultaneously wielding its awesome power in a way completely unbecoming to fundamentally conservative jurisprudence.

Then there is also the practical question.

What the Court might do logically is restore the right to keep and bear arms, but demur from "incorporating" the Second Amendment. Conceivably, the Court could affirm the fundamental freedom but respect the local authority to the DC City Council to make law in accord with the democratic process.

However, at that juncture, someone might well ask how far the federal government may go in regulating individual gun ownership in view of the newly rejuvenated right to keep and bear arms.

In re the federal government, the original intent is clear:

"...the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

Of course, this question takes us back to our 1939 point of demarcation for this long legal odyssey. When faced with their contemporary exigencies, the Supreme Court felt obligated to bend its interpretation of history and intent in order to allow the federal government the right to regulate manifestly dangerous and problematic weapons.

The practical questions remain.

This is why Solicitor General Paul Clement showed up on Tuesday to argue simultaneously that the right to keep and bear arms exists--but not without some limits.

Where are the limits?

Weapons for hunting and self defense are allowed--but not assault rifles and machine guns?

On the other hand, taken to the extreme, if the purpose of the Second Amendment is to protect liberty from the accumulation of power, should not the citizenry have the right to keep and bear weapons comparable to the entity that poses the greatest threat to liberty? Which, from an eighteenth-century point of view, is clearly the government?

Tough questions. This cohort of conservatives promise to be stalwart, sincere, and profoundly gifted--but, on this case, they find themselves between a rock and a hard place. I will await this decision with guarded optimism and a heightened sense of anticipation.

A RESPONSE FROM TOCQUEVILLE:

The Fourteenth Amendment, as written, applies only to the states. The Heller case involves the District of Columbia, which is most definitely not a state. Thus, this case does not involve incorporation, but (if the 14th Amendment is even implicated) would involve the doctrine of reverse incorporation. See Bolling v. Sharpe, etc. But I'm not sure the 14th Amendment is implicated at all in the D.C. case of Heller.

Also, for all legal and constitutional purposes, the Distict of Columbia IS the federal government. And the fact that, like a state, the laws were enacted by duly elected officials here is no different with the federal government, whose laws are also enacted by duly elected officials.

A WACO FARMER AGAIN:

Thank you, Tocqueville, for articulating this vital element of the case (and a perhaps fatal flaw in my reasoning). The fact that this is a DC petition definitely adds another wrinkle to the complexity of this question--and possibly offers a welcomed "out" to the majority. But is it not the expectation that the Court may well offer a much broader ruling, which would apply to the states as well? Does that not explain General Clement's concern?

If this only concerns DC, why do we care?

A PREDICTION FROM TOCQUEVILLE:

My prediction is that the Court will recognize a full-bodied individual right to gun ownership under the 2nd Amendment (This is why we care. The Court will be deciding what the 2nd Amendment means, and the 2nd Amendment means the same thing in and out of D.C.). But I predict that the Court will strike down the D.C. statute as unconstitutional on very narrow grounds. In short, I expect the Court to find that an outright ban on gun ownership is patently unconstitutional. But the Court will leave plenty of room for the regulation and control of gun ownership for health and safety reasons. And this right to regulate may likely be broader for the states than it is for the federal government.

Today on Sean Hannity's radio show, wild-haired pollster John Zogby floated the idea of Al Gore as a compromise candidate for the Democratic nomination. The Zogby plan: Jimmy Carter and some other party wise men convince Barack Obama to release his delegates to Al Gore in exchange for the VP slot. The powers that be assure Mrs. Clinton that she would ascend to Senate Majority Leader as part of the deal, and everybody leaves happy.

Really? Al Gore? Really?

One of the most unelectable figures in the history of American politics?

Is John Kerry not available?

What about Walter Mondale? Ted Kennedy, maybe? Unfortunately, Ed Muskie passed away, but I think George McGovern is still alive. What about him?

We appreciate you thinking out of the box, Zog--but perhaps you should go back to the drawing board on this one.

I have already said that the Speech was historic and remarkable and marvelous (albeit ultimately unsatisfying).

But what about the politics? The Horse Race?

Remember: Obama is an insurgent candidate locked in a death match with the political equivalent of "Anton Chigurh," the relentless pursuer from No Country for Old Men. To win in the end, he has always needed to run a near-perfect race with no big mistakes. After performing flawlessly for months, coming mere inches away from realizing the impossible and closing out this race on March 4th, was this crisis Obama's fatal error?

Dr. Politics, Steffen Schmidt, commented here today:

"Rest assured that only political geeks like us heard or read the speech. At best voters got some fleeting report on local news that Obama gave a speech. The GOP is compiling short, grainy black and white mini-spots of Wright overlaid with an unflattering picture of Obama that floats in a scary way across the screen.

"The stuff Wright said may be justified for blacks but it is not acceptable to most whites, Jews, Asian Americans, and many Hispanics.

"I think the "O'Mentum" has been stopped dead in its tracks."

Insightful.

Obama has two major problems coming out of Philadelphia:

1. The Speech, while interesting and provocative, placed the comments of Reverend Wright at the center of the campaign. This is not insignificant. We (the conservative world) and ABC News have been talking non-stop about this revelation-slash-crisis since last Thursday, but this morning, in order to analyze the monumental address, NPR was forced to introduce the story to its listeners--as they had virtually ignored it until yesterday. The Newshour with Jim Lehrer was in a similar position--having ignored the story--save for the end-of-the-week political wrap-up with Shields and Brooks--Brooks having pronounced Obama's disastrous dissembling from last week "the perfect statement of dignity" and "a glimmer of hope" in a world otherwise gone terribly wrong. You just can't buy that kind of analysis. Even Tim Russert soft-pedaled the emerging crisis on Meet the Press Sunday, burying the discussion in the midst of other more important issues.

Last night and today, in order to cover the Speech, and demonstrate how transcendent the moment, tenets of basic journalism forced the mainstream media into explaining the context of the modern "Gettysburg Address." The downside of all the superlatives: Jeremiah Wright and the Trinity United Church of Christ are now fair game through November.

Why did Obama do it? Because he had no choice. He understood the wild fire that was raging underneath the radar and gaining ground. He made the best of a bad situation, but, all things considered, he suffered a net loss: his eloquent treatise on race in America does not overcome the "mainstreaming" of Jeremiah Wright. This is one "crazy uncle" that Obama desperately needed to stay in the attic.

2. Worse yet, after so skillfully avoiding the potential pitfall over the course of his long campaign, the crisis forced Obama into making race the central motif of his candidacy. Goodbye subtlety. Goodbye quiet undertone. Goodbye plausible deniability. This development makes his run exponentially more challenging.

Again, why did he do it? Again, he had no choice. He was desperate. Only a wider and more majestic discussion of race could temporarily insulate him from the growing firestorm.

What now? Even as he basks in the glow of nearly unanimous admiration, he is bloodied and staggered. He may well be mortally wounded. And as Obama continues to hemorrhage, Mrs. Clinton gets stronger with each passing day.

Remember the equation: the superdelegates get to pick whomever they deem the most electable candidate come fall--and the rationale for public consumption need not conform to the reality.

What can save Barack Obama?

Perhaps a liberal backlash. Right now Obama's tormentors are the very same folks good liberals love to hate: Hannity, Limbaugh, FOX News, the conservative blogosphere.

The conservative schadenfreude could save him, just as it resurrected Mrs. Clinton in New Hampshire.

But that strikes me as unlikely.

As the Swabian Prince suggested earlier this week, Mrs. Clinton will more likely benefit from the hard feelings against the vast right-wing conspiracy that deprived America of its transcendent Deliverer.

Perhaps the question now is this: will the Clintons attempt to rehabilitate Obama sufficiently for a run as VP--or is he already too radioactive?

UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers; it is always an honor.

The Editors of National Review argue that Barack Obama deployed his formidable talents to try to minimize and excuse Rev. Wright’s rants. Available here.

In response to my analysis of the Address, my previously quoted learned friend weighs in:

I disagree with Steele. Obama is not merely someone for whom we are settling. It may be true that Obama would not be in the same spot if he were white, but that is tantamount to saying Bill Clinton could not have succeeded if he had not been from Arkansas. I cannot conceive of an un-Southern Clinton any more than I can conceive of an un-Black Obama.

Having said that, lineage is a fundamental part of his makeup. I also think that his ancestry gives him a unique perspective from which to govern. Although whites do not like to hear this, most of us are so far removed from black culture that we sometimes tend to see blacks as two-dimensional characters. Their experiences and cultural assumptions are so different from ours that we have a hard time achieving true empathy with them. We really cannot imagine being in their shoes.

We can hope that Barack, as someone who has lived in both worlds and speaks the language of both cultures, can address the concerns of both groups with empathy. Of course, there I go again with my sincerity and honesty talk.

In my view, Steele is completely wrong in his assertion that Obama has had to trade away his individuality and complexity to play the role of racial peacemaker. In fact, I think Obama's main appeal (even before the speech yesterday) has been his willingness to confront difficult but vital issues head-on—and then discuss them with nuance.

For example: please consider this speech he gave in 2006 concerning the role of religion in American public life. I have never seen a more thoughtful, honest, and nuanced discussion of the topic by anyone in politics.

An Aside: ironically, this consistent ability to examine tough issues with keen insight and uncommon courage often drives his opponents to fits of rhetorical hyperbole.

I agree that Obama did not offer solutions for the problems he identified, but that seems a bit onerous for a single address. Solving over two hundred years of racial problems in a campaign speech may be too much to expect, even for Obama. It is significant and admirable, however, in a political realm where these issues are NEVER confronted honestly, where the other side is routinely dismissed as hateful or un-American, that Barack faced race squarely and with vulnerability—and attempted to start a meaningful conversation.

For the record, I agree with your suggestion that we all need to reject the idea that there are certain things that just may not be discussed. Bumper sticker arguments and racially charged rhetorical landmines are poison to our political culture. We need not agree on all the vital issues of our time, but we should be willing to have civil conversations about everything.

In re his "boilerplate" comments concerning health care, job loss, and getting out of Iraq: these are the issues of the day. Americans have been apathetic about politics because politicians have not been addressing the issues closest to home. If Obama succeeds, it will be because he tackles these issues and forces a conversation about them.

~~A Learned Friend of the Bosque Boys

From the Wall Street Journal:

"The Federal Reserve continued its two-front attack on the credit crunch with a steep rate cut, and hinted at more to come.

"The cut was less than financial markets wanted. But in a sign the Fed's prior efforts to boost lending through unconventional means may be getting some traction, stocks soared, buoyed by earnings reports from two big investment banks."

As for me, I am going to hold out until the Fed starts paying me to borrow money.

Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever.

~~Thomas Jefferson

March 18, 2008 likely will prove to be an historic day.

Barack Obama, the first viable African American candidate for president of the United States, delivered a remarkable speech today in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love and the cradle of American liberty.

Much more obscure, and likely to be lost to the vast throng of posterity, the Wall Street Journal posted a hard-hitting and brutally honest Shelby Steele essay, which purports to explain an important component of the Obama phenomenon: race.

Taken together, they offer a revealing and insightful window into our history, our present reality, and our current dilemma.

Shelby Steele:

Barack Obama is absolutely correct that race has historically proven a disadvantage for African Americans seeking opportunity, prestige, and political power. Notwithstanding, Steele asserts that "race," at least at this particular moment, "is a powerful positive force in the body politic" filling the sails of the unique Obama candidacy. In agreement with Geraldine Ferraro’s now famous remark, Steele affirms: "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position."

Why?

Obama's success is incumbent on a desperately desired "opportunity for whites to [personally] experience racial innocence."

Moreover, his campaign is an "allegory" for collective racial "redemption, reconciliation, and transcendence."

Perhaps we are all trying to get right with a just God?

Steele labels Obama a "bargainer,” skilled at manipulating an ancient white angst and dread over racial injustice .

Steele: "Bargainers make the subliminal promise to whites not to shame them with America's history of racism."

Bargainers present themselves as vehicles for white absolution. In return, whites, desperately in need of atonement, jump at the opportunity to enter into this mutually beneficial contract and accord full privileges and more to the convenient and pleasing vessel of deliverance.

Is there a downside to this reciprocally satisfying relationship between consenting adults?

According to Steele, the bargainer must surrender his individuality and complexity, opting for "invisibility" as an inoffensive and safe "conduit" for racial harmony.

"Thus, nothing could be more dangerous to Mr. Obama's political aspirations," asserts Steele, "than the revelation...that he sat Sunday after Sunday--for 20 years--in an Afro-centric, black nationalist church in which [whites] could never feel comfortable."

Steele is exactly right. Reverend Wright proved Big Trouble. Was Obama cornered with no way out?

What would he do?

He showed brave, facing the pack, pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

In fact, I think he might have escaped.

I am anxious to hear Steele's analysis of the Obama speech, but it seems to me that the stealthy "bargainer" forever shed his cloak of invisibility and forthrightly confronted the issue of race in America.

Moreover, he abandoned his weasel words in re Wright. He was there. He heard the sermons. He disagrees. He was offended. But then he offered an incredibly nuanced (and to me compelling) explanation of why he continues to love his pastor, his church, and his fellow congregants.

I thought Obama demonstrated an expert feel for American history. For the most part, he got the story right: the details, the ideals, the contradictions, the injustices, and the triumphs.

He also somewhat uncharacteristically placed himself and his candidacy plainly within the context of the long struggle to live up to our nation's founding principles, at the same time returning to a more familiar theme, casting himself as the embodiment of E Pluribus Unum.

It would have been more meaningful if he had said this when his public life was not at risk--but I thought he was on to something when he exhorted us to forego the toxic "gotcha" racial politics.

I find significant discomfort in the parade of conservatives, who, in our pursuit of Obama and his pastor, have adopted the language of the politically correct Left. If we have any hope of returning to sanity on the issue of speech, we will find it necessary to break the cycle of acrimonious sanctimony. Perhaps we should take the initiative and grant clemency when we hold the upper hand in one of these disgusting and frightening public spectacles.

The repeated accusations of racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism are inflicting great injury to our civil society. Accepting the proposition that "hate" and "hate speech" are the ultimate mortal and unpardonable sins is an unwise long-term strategy for conservatives; this invidious protocol is a rigged game invented by liberals that we can never ultimately win.

The downside of the Obama speech:

1. VDH is right: Obama did not address the key questions concerning "damage" done by the Reverend Wrights of the world. What Shelby Steele described as “this usually hidden corner of contemporary black life: a mindless indulgence in a rhetorical anti-Americanism as a way of bonding and of asserting one's blackness.”

2. Also as Steele notes, and Obama confirmed today, the "candidate of change" offers nothing "more than Democratic Party boilerplate" drivel. The Senator got all the questions right--but then failed to deliver on any answers. Where is the beef? After such a promising start, he offered us nothing of substance to consider.

The bottom line: this speech was a wonderfully well-crafted masterpiece of oratory. Did it save him from a complete and total meltdown? I think so. Was he able to deftly change the subject? Most probably. However, he walks away from this skirmish sullied and wounded. We know more about this candidate than we did a week ago—and it is not all good. We are watching him now with a new wariness.

However, in my mind, this relationship with his misguided pastor does not disqualify him to be president.

UPDATE: One last thought: it should not surprise us that the man who seems to be running for Redeemer in Chief begins this speech with America's "original sin."

Victor Davis Hanson is not mincing words:

"Barack Obama’s Tuesday sermon was a well-crafted, well-delivered, postmodern review of race that had little to do with the poor judgment revealed in Obama’s relationship with the hateful Rev. Wright, much less the damage that he does both to African Americans and to the country in general."

Hanson goes on to say: "Rather than account for his relationship with a hate-monger, Obama will enlighten you, as your teacher, why you are either confused or too ill-intended to ask him to disassociate himself from Wright."

Read Hanson's blistering breakdown of Obama's speech here.