Obama's Speech on Race - A Historic Address

Note: I watched most of this speech on TV today. It was mostly spoken from the heart, not read off a sheet of paper or from a teleprompter. It was so clearly sincere in its delivery that I was more than once brought to tears.

We have something very special in this man. I hope we are smart enough to recognize it.

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March 18, 2008, 10:27 am

A More Perfect Union

Here, the full text of Sen. Barack Obama’s speech as prepared for delivery.

“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas.

I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters.

I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one. Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity.

Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary.

The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn. On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap.

On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy.

For some, nagging questions remain.

Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice.

Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church?

And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way.

But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor.

He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones.

"Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger.

Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear.

The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America. And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright.

As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children.

Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect.

He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years. I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not.

I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect.

And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American. Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point.

As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.”

We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations.

That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted.

What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future.

Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years.

That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table.

At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings. And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews.

The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning.

That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change.

But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch.

They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense.

So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation.

Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends.

Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many.

And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years.

Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans — the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family.

And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old — is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past.

But what we know — what we have seen – is that America can change.

That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations.

It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us.

Let us be our sister’s keeper.

Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well. For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news.

We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words.

We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies. We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem.

The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life.

This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected.

And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.

There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta. There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina.

She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there. And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care.

They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom. She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama.

He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.” “I’m here because of Ashley.”

By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

Round Top Register Endorses Barack Obama

As I have mentioned before on this blog, I run a tiny rural quarterly newspaper that comes from a town with a population of 77 in central Texas. Our next issue goes to press early next week. The Texas Democratic primary is on March 4th, and we are endorsing a candidate for President.

This is what that editorial in the Round Top Register will say.

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Things are changing fast in America. In November we will be selecting a new President. The odds are that either an African-American or a woman will be elected to the highest office in the land. That would be a truly "historic" choice that would say something profound about how far we have come.

As an American citizen, those facts make my chest puff up like a new father peering through the window as his first child. I am proud of my nation, amazed at how far we have come and very hopeful for the future. And that is a transformation I did not think was possible.

I am a hopeful person in my everyday life, but I had lost all faith that we would ever rise above the politics of fear and division promoted by the last administration, and the cronyism, deceit and excess of the one before. To me, the presidents that had come before those only looked better in retrospect. During their administrations, I was equally disappointed.

I was in the sixth grade when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Since that time, no candidate for the Presidency - nor any sitting President – has overcome the cynicism and sullen anger I have felt towards our government.

But that is all changed now.

I believe we are at the crossroads of what may prove to be the most significant period of constructive political change in our nation’s politics in the last fifty years. And all because one voice in this race has turned the anger and frustration of the American people into hope.

One voice has elevated the civility of our political discourse in a way that has changed the rules for what makes a successful campaign. One voice has found a way to inspire, to talk straight about our challenges, to offer compassion, and unbelievably…still win!

If there was one truth I held to be inalienable, it was that a politician could not be act like a good and respectful person – and win.

But that single voice has made it politically dangerous to “swift boat” the opposition. It has quieted the dirty cycle of character assassination that has defiled our nation for so long. It may not last, but we are the ones who allow such tactics to influence our votes, and we are being taught something new.

We need nothing more in this time than to be able to trust our leaders. Our nation faces many dangerous and complex challenges. The people are fed up with partisanship and gridlock, with ideology instead of results. They see our country’s wealth and vitality slipping away and they are in no mood for that trend to continue. They have lost faith.

Sacrifice will be needed – sacrifice by you and me – if we are to face and overcome our many challenges. And people will not sacrifice of themselves for a government they cannot trust.

Only one voice in this campaign tells the truth about that.

Only one voice says “…it will not be easy.” And that is the voice comes from a black man who has risen from humble beginnings to become the junior senator from Illinois.

That voice comes from Barack Obama.

No one wants to talk about race and gender. The media dances around it. The campaigns duck the subject as though it were an illicit affair or a charge of corruption.

But isn’t the fact we have come to the point in our history that a black man or a woman could become President what is most exciting about this race?

And isn’t that a powerful signal to the world that we are still the most vibrant, egalitarian, compassionate and politically advanced nation on earth!

Think what it will mean if and when it happens…about who we are!

Our country was founded on the principle that “all men were created equal.” But that was just a “pie in the sky” promise whose time had not come when it was written. In 1776, it was far from true.

If the truth would have been told, it would have said “all well educated white land owners of Western European lineage with considerable wealth” are created equal.

Women, Native Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and immigrants of every shade and culture were not “equal” to most of our founding fathers, and African Americans were their slaves!

All of those “unequal” early inhabitants of the thirteen colonies were human beings with hope in their hearts, with children to raise and dreams they wanted to fulfill…but none of them had a place at the table when our constitution was signed.

But a small group among those privileged few shared a vision of a better nation, and put their lives on the line to give it a chance to rise to heights never seen before.

People have put their lives on the line to fulfill that vision ever since. Generation upon generation, people have suffered and died for the hope that it would some day become a reality.

Now, we are on the verge of making that dream come true.

And if we do, we will have broken the chains of thousands of years of history. We will have truly done something unparalleled not just in our time, but in the history of mankind.

And we, as a nation, will have accomplished that.

You and I.

Politicians arise from the people. Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton will not have made this happen, any more than John McCain created campaign finance reform on his own.

“We the people” sometimes rise up and propel the leaders we need into power…and we are doing that now.

And let us talk of leadership.

You cannot lead people where they will not go. You cannot trick or manipulate, frighten or cajole a nation into rising to challenges, particularly in this time when the electorate is in many ways more sophisticated and better informed than their politicians.

In an information rich nation of free people, you must lead by example. You must lead by building trust. You must lead by creating a big vision that people can believe in, and then walking your talk as best you can.

Arrogance will not get you there. Humility will be required, and forgiveness, and patience, and honesty about your own mistakes and weaknesses.

And now it appears someone has appeared who understands these things.

Barack Obama is charged by his opponents with not having the experience to be a good leader. Let us look at the facts as they are.

What kind of leadership does it take to create a campaign that has defied the predictions of every odds maker in the land from little or nothing, and to have effectively defeated the most powerful political force in the Democratic party?

What kind of leader does it take to craft a message that inspires a nation to engage in the political process to a degree not seen in most of our lifetimes?

There was no genius Karl Rove with a cadre of political operatives behind the scenes when this started. The fix was not in. There was no previous president in this man’s family with a political machine at his beck and call, and the power and prestige to pave the way.

Obama did this himself - he and his wife, Michelle - and so far they have done it without visibly sacrificing their principles.

And all of this was done in a nation which has not fully overcome racism and prejudice; and one obsessed with self interest and material gain.

Think what kind of leadership that takes.

And look at the tools he used to build this unstoppable political juggernaut. Think what intelligence, strategic vision, persuasiveness, planning and determination it took to make that happen.

Here is real leadership. Real results. Proof that anyone can see.

From my point of view as an independent, all four of the candidates still in the race are good people. I won’t be voting for him, but I have long admired John McCain’s record of integrity and independence. I won’t be voting for Mike Huckabee either, but he is a likable figure and I’d love to grab my guitar and sit in with his band, or go to his church to hear a sermon.

The grudge the electorate holds against Hilary Clinton involves the sins of her husband, not her own. The main thing we cannot forgive…is that she forgave him.

We blame her for the fact we cannot forgive the man she loves. That says something about us, not her.

I have been watching all these candidates for months, and my sense is that she is a talented, effective, focused and caring person who would make an excellent President.

And I for one would have been passionately excited to support a woman of her quality for many of the same reasons I now support Barack Obama had I had not heard that voice.

After all, an equally important “glass ceiling” would have been broken. A new day would have come, one that is still long past due.

But I did hear that unexpected voice crying in the wilderness.

Who could have known this would happen? From whence did this voice rise up?

I say the answer is within us.

We called Barack Obama forth because we were ready for a new day. And now we must take what we have created and use it step by step to make our country great again.

For all his eloquence and brilliance, Barack Obama is just a man. He will make mistakes. He cannot change America on his own. Nor can our government.

Alone, and without the patience and determination of the people he will only be one more politician who tried and failed.

But he offers us an opportunity to be a better nation, an opportunity to return to our better selves, an opportunity to shine our light once again to the nations of the world.

We should leap for this opportunity. We should listen to that voice within us - the one he is talking to when he says “…yes we can.”

Because he is living proof that it is true.

Designing and Building a Nation IV

Obama's Vision vs Clinton's "How To"

(Part of a series of related posts - First One here)

Much has changed in the race for the Presidency since my last post .

Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama are now neck and neck in the delegate race...and the fickle but much desired "momentum" seems to be shifting to the candidate who is touting change and "vision," and away from the candidate who is promoting experience.

Which gives me the perfect chance to talk about the advantages of beginning a design process by seeking to understand the "vision" of a prospective client.

Though it may be presumptuous, I would suggest that the approach to architecture and interior design promoted on this blog in some ways suggests how "Barack Obama" might approach designing a home if he were to switch careers.

The methods I suggest are subject to many of the same criticisms made by Hilary Clinton and her supporters against Obama, and exhibit many of the same strengths of the ideology and tone of Mr. Obama's campaign for President.

For instance, Hilary points out fairly that Barack does not have her experience in national and international affairs. She implies he is naive and does not have the "how to" skills to get the job done properly.

Needless to say, there are many who suggest that the practice of seeking design criteria from the heads and hearts of your clients - particularly from their subconscious or emotional response - is similarly untested.

Hilary rightly warns that designing and building a nation is a project of profound importance - that it is complex, fraught with difficulty and full of risk - and therefore that sticking to tried and true methods is the best course.

Similarly, making major changes to a home involves critically important decisions, for many people the most important financial decisions of their lives. Such projects are often very complicated, and there is no question that the experience of those who "lead" the process matters a great deal.

Further, there are plenty of "tried and true" methods used in everyday architectural practice, and despite their limitations (and there are many), they do indeed have a proven track record.

So in both cases, there are legitimate arguments against the ideas of the agents of change.

Change is risky. Change can cause upheaval and disruption. Change requires people to learn new things, take chances, alter the habits with which they have grown comfortable, and in the end...change does not necessarily guarantee a better result.

So given that, why do so many people in America seem so eager for it?

Because they are not happy with the status quo.

The pundits always have a ready list of labels for why not - the state of the economy, the state of our various military adventures, the state of the environment, the state of social and religious values, the state of our civil liberties - but in truth, it is mostly about the state of our "feelings."

People simply don't feel happy, safe and secure. They are in a state of dissatisfaction because they feel anxious and threatened by how they perceive the state of the nation.

So these united "states" of being are making them feel uncomfortable - and when people feel uncomfortable for long periods of time - they get restless and want change.

The same thing happens to homeowners.

Americans in particular have always had a bad case of "greener pastures" syndrome when it comes to their homes. And when asked why - they also have a list of reasons why - but the real reasons often come down to they are just restless in their lives and want change.

And they make those changes in incredible numbers. Real estate, residential construction and home improvement constitute the biggest sector of the national economy outside of government. Just follow the money if you want to see where our priorities lie.

The entire sub-prime mortgage crisis is a testament to the fact that people will take almost any risk to acquire or upgrade a home.

And why? Because they think if they change their living circumstances, it will change their lives for the better.

And how will they know when that happens?

By how they feel. They know their lives are better when they feel that way. And changing your living space can make you feel better simply because your environment is different...at least, for a while.

But Hilary would say creating lasting change requires knowing "how to" design and built a nation. She would say vision is all well and good, but if you don't know how to implement it, your efforts will be for naught.

So let's talk vision...and its ingredients.

Barack Obama's vision is one of hope. But the version of "hope" he is promoting "will not be easy." His definition of hope is not some insubstantial "dream," but a compass for action over time.

What he is selling is not just the possibility of a better America, but the truth that is will take sacrifice, intention and communal will applied consistently for years and years.

That is what makes his message so powerful.

After paying a lot of attention to him over the last few months I have come to the opinion that he could not have accomplished the near impossible task of bringing his "hope" of becoming President so close to fruition if his vision was not sincere.

People can smell insincerity in their politicians these days. We are cynical and suspicious. We assume anyone running for office is at the least, self interested...and possibly corrupt.

So Barack Obama is a surprise. He introduces new phenomena in the design and building project we call America - vision tinged with frankness - and we are starved for it.

It also suggests that he has mastered a lot of the "how to" of politics.

So what can we learn from Barack's incredible rise that you and I can apply to our own projects?

First, that you must begin with a clear vision. If you do not know your destination, you are likely to get lost in your campaign for a fitting home when things get tough.

Second, that "dreams" are always attacked by the status quo. If you are a design professional, you will have to overcome the cynicism and attacks of those in your own profession.

If you are someone intent on creating a house that "feels like a home," you must overcome the uninformed voices of of the status quo posturing as rationality and reason.

Those voices might be coming from your mate, the professionals you might hire, your friends and neighbors, or the pundits of real estate and home improvement - but one thing is for sure - your vision must withstand them. And you must have the determination and will to turn your vision into reality.

No one else will supply it.

Now let us look at the same issue from Hilary's point of view. I like Hilary and think like most people whose political views are to the left of Genghis Khan, that she would make an effective president.

But she has a "how to" approach to government. She is trapped by her own competence and experience. Despite her progressive agenda, she is an agent of the status quo.

And with that as her tool kit, she cannot possibly set a new course for America except in the context of the sad legacy of last administration.

And "different and smarter than last bunch of idiots" is not a recipe for transformational change.

It is not "outside the box." It is a reaction against, not an action for...

The same is true when you decide to change your living space. Yet almost everyone comes to a project thinking "how to."

When they should be asking questions like "...who are we now, and who do we want to become?"

"How do we live, and how do we translate the complexities of our lives into a criteria for a home that fits?"

"How can my home environment empower my relationships, my values and my life goals?"

Asking those questions seriously requires an underlying view of reality. They require that you consider it possible that changing your home can change your life.

They require you to believe in yourself. They require that you accept that you are valuable enough to deserve such a living space.

And that you can do anything you put your mind to...if you work hard enough, and keep your eye on your goal.

And when you stand in that place, you stand in the realm of visions that come true.

And best of all, you don't need to know "how to" do it.

You just have to believe it is possible...and take one step after another until you get there.

Click here to read the first post in this series.

Designing and Building a Nation III

(Part of a series of related posts - First One here)

John Edwards and Rudy Guiliani abandoned their quests for the Presidency today. Their poor showings in the Florida primary apparently "slammed the door" on their hopes for a turnaround in their campaigns.

Politics in America is complex and hard to predict. The electorate - particularly in this election season - is boisterous, dissatisfied with government and ready for a change. At least that is the "story" being told today in America.

Just for fun, we are telling a story too. It is a story about how we might "build a nation" using the same techniques we might use when designing and building a home.

After all, most of us think of the nation in which we live as our "home country."

But the word "home" has a lot of different meanings which I go on at length about here.

So the first thing I want to talk about in this post is not the "bricks and sticks" that make up our national project, but the "story" that is the heart of it.

Because a nation and a home must start with a story in the minds of those who build them - and after they are built - that story never really stops being written.

Howard Mair puts it this way.

"Stories are habitations. We live in and through stories. They conjure worlds. We do not know the world other than story world. Stories inform life. They hold us together and keep us apart. We inhabit the great stories of our culture...are lived by the stories of our race and place...We are, each of us, locations where the stories of our place and time become partially tell able."

For a small town storyteller, that says it all. America is defined in many ways not by its geography, its political system or foreign policy, but by the inspirational tales at its heart.

That is also true of a home. A home tells the stories of the people who inhabit it, but the stories of both homes and nations are often largely fictional.

There is a perfectly good reason for that.

In a world where everything is subject to interpretation, the only truth is a useful interpretation. If you are going to live a story, you might as well pick one with a happy ending.

And life offers very few "happy endings" for a home or a nation. Both crumble into dust in time. Denying the evidence of history is the reason we are so committed to our personal, familial and national "stories."

Facing the inevitable decline of our bodies and of those we love is no fun and makes it hard to get out of bed in the morning.

The same is true about the true story of our country. There is nothing particularly inspirational about the real experiences of the genocide of Native Americans, the War Between the State, either of last centuries world wars, Viet Nam, the invasions of Grenada and Panama or our current adventure in Iraq.

So in order to rationalize our own self-interest, we weave stories of heroic struggles against tyranny and evil, repeating the oft-told tale that we are fighting to save freedom and the "American way of life."

But of course all those horrific wars were a very big part of our "way of life" and sadly, for many of us, the "way of death."

The stories we tell about our nation may not be true, but they sound a lot better when you tell them that way.

Next post is series here.

Designing and Building a Nation II

(Second of a series of related posts- Part One here.)

Now that we have completed a "cursory site examination" of the building site upon which our political project was begun, let's take a look at the programming for the project.

"Programming" is what architects and design professionals call the process of collecting criteria for the design of a project.

The advantage of establishing such criteria is that it provides you with guidelines for the design of the structure that give the designer a better chance of staying true to the needs of the inhabitants.

That is assuming the criteria you collect comes from those inhabitants, and not from the fevered imaginations of the architects and builders.

So in our on-going metaphor, what were the criteria for that design?

Happily in this case, we have a pretty thorough set of design criteria. It is called the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

The project is also informed by an earlier document - quite controversial at the time - referred to as the Declaration of Independence.

The building permit was contested by the authorities in this case, and as a result, a war was required before real construction could begin.

Great Britain at the time had strict land use and architectural controls regarding their colonies, so our nation' s designers and builders had to "fight city hall" to make their project viable.

But once they accomplished that, they had a pretty clear vision of the type of nation they wanted to construct.

They wrote down their "first principles" (a specifications document) in the Constitution and Bill of Rights and said those criteria were "created equal" for all upcoming projects.

This was a good move, because their goal was to acquire a great deal of additional real estate and though they knew lots of change orders were inevitable, they did not want to suffer major revisions in the design as the scope of their projects grew.

Those "first principles" were predominantly values, goals and moral and ethical standards for human beings and society...not for the structure of the "sticks and bricks" that would be used to build the project.

They were criteria like equality, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, the right to bear arms, etc. etc. All building standards we take for granted now, but at the time, they were revolutionary new building technologies for political structures.

A question that arises here, is why such values and goals are for the most part, not a central goal of architectural programming today.

After all, the buildings we design are supposed to house human beings. Human beings are emotional and cognitive organisms who are quite impetuous and reactive. They tend to do better on long-term projects when guidelines are established.

And really, it is hard to take the human being out of the purpose of a building, no matter how effectively the modern and post modern movements in architecture have tried to do so.

So why are these human "first principles" not part of present day architectural programming?

Why don't we try to find out how people feel about their built environments; what they care about and what values they use to guide their lives; how they live day to day within those environments - before we set out to design a building?

Why do those of us in the design community tend to think "how to" instead of "what fits?"

And "what will it look like" instead of "who will be living in it and how do they live?"

This question goes beyond "form follows function." It goes to the question of a building's human purpose, and the nature of the human beings who will inhabit it.

Which seems like a good area to investigate if you are designing buildings for human beings.

Next post is series here.

Designing and Building a Nation

I have been thinking of late of the similarities between building a home...and building a nation.

A nation is, after all, a society built for common defense - a set of agreements made by many - with the goal being to shelter their children and possessions from harm.

Which is the same rational my wife used when she decided we should put new carpet and a dishwasher in our little house in the mountains.

So with that metaphor in mind, I have decided to speculate on what architecture has to offer our political leaders; and conversely, what the political process of nation building has to offer to the practice of architecture.

This seems to me a rich vein to mine in an election year, so I think I will celebrate the beginning of 2008 with a series of posts that explore two simple questions:

"If you were going to design and build a nation from scratch, how could the experience of capable architects and builders inform its design?"

and second...

"What can architecture learn from the democratic political process that might help designers better serve the needs of their clients?"

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It seems to me the best place to start is with definitions and "first principles."

Exploring such a metaphor is dangerous if you cannot define what elements of the fabric of a nation can be fairly compared to that of a building project.

I might end up comparing Hillary Clinton to a vacuum cleaner , or John McCain to a delapidated but reliable old HVAC system right at the outset, and my entire inquiry could dissolve into irrelevance.

It is perhaps true that one part of that metaphor might be applicable. After all, most politicians move a lot of air, often permeated with dirt and other impurities...but once you get past that surface similarity, the comparison falls flat.

There is no real evidence that Hillary would "clean up" America, nor that Senator McCain would "cool down" the political discourse in the nation.

So if we are going to commit ourselves to integrity in our search for any real solutions each domain of human activity has to offer the other, we must launch our inquest where all good stories must begin...at the beginning.

And that would be with a site examination. After all, no capable designer would begin a design without first assessing the characteristics of the site upon which that building - or that nation - will be constructed.

We all have some idea of the site upon which the construction of our nation was originally begun.

Geographically, it was the East coast of the North American continent. Culturally, the building site was dominated by British general contractors, with a variety of Dutch, French, Spanish, German, African and other secondary sub-contractors.

Politically, the building site was taken by force and political manipulation from an indigenous population who were overwhelmed by the superior business planning and acquisitiveness of the invading European nations.

Ideologically, it was born from the political history of Britain, but modified by the ideas of the time - which were in large part coming from French intellectuals.

Site acquisition followed a successful model already tested in South and Central America by the Spanish, and in Africa and Asia by a variety of earlier European real estate developers.

They used the same rational by which our government acquired the bulk of the state of New Mexico, a principle called "eminent domain."

As soon as native lands were eminent on the horizon - we decided they should be our domain.

So the site conditions on the land upon which the "land of the free" was built had a significant pitch to its grade. Things went uphill for the European settlers, and decidedly downhill for the existing native American inhabitants.

It was sort of like the "gentrification" of inner city neighborhoods close to downtown by upscale white professionals. Once it started, it was impossible to stop.

Thus, the American nation was built upon the typically opposing principles of self-interest and cooperation.

After all, our forefathers cooperated very effectively to clear the building site of features that did not meet their design criteria - for instance native Americans and a great portion of our nation's native forests.

They did that so they could make more money and build equity in their newly acquired real estate. However, some of their investments were short-sighted. The fact that less than 2% of California's giant redwoods exist today attests to that fact.

If the existing inhabitants did not have a good title, and there was quite a lot of mischief in that arena during the nations growth westward, well life is tough and then you die.

Those with the money and political swack would explain to the dispossessed homesteaders and native populations that it was just business. Nothing personal.

Not much difference between how it all began and how any other speculative real estate development begins in today's America.

So the creation of the United States could be seen as a series of somewhat risky subdivisions built out in the boonies by wildcat developers using the money of investors on the other side of the Atlantic who hadn't the slightest idea what kind of swampland they were financing.

When times were good, new towns and settlements sprung up like flowers in the Spring. When times were hard, they dried up and blew away like tumbleweeds. As the suburbs filled up with gated communities, the aging inner city neighborhoods deteriorated.

People either made huge profits or lost their buckskin shirts. Distress properties were bought for a song, then flipped for a quick profit. Smaller competitors were squeezed out and a lot of money changed hands under the table.

So nothing fancy. The development of America followed a pattern just like a typical day at work for many architects, builders and developers in Florida, California or New York City.

So what we have learned in this first post is that the building of our nation - and the practice of speculative real estate development - have a lot in common at first glance.

Both begin with acquiring land for a low price, and the aspiration to sell it for a high price.

That appears to have worked fine all across the continent until our founding developers ran into the Pacific Ocean - where except for sporadic forays into Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, Southeast Asia and Iraq - we ran out of real estate.

Which explains why homes are so expensive in San Francisco.

It's all about location, location, location.

Next post in series here.

A Language of Living Architecture

(Last of three related posts - Start at the beginning here.)

If you think about it, it is easy to see a strong relationship between the words we speak - the symbols, spoken language, gestures, and body language through which we communicate with others - and the environment human beings have built.

In one sense, nothing can exist for us as individuals or societies until we have a word to describe that object or event to others around us.

As Marshall McLuhan told us forty years ago, "the medium is the message."

For human beings, language not only describes, but in some ways, creates every social relationship.

It is no surprise that in many religious traditions, the universe was created by the "word" of God.

Each individual culture - each society - organizes around a unique descriptive language of shared experience and value, and that language creates the "architecture" of that unique social organism.

This is true for countries, ethnic groups, corporations, professions, towns and cities, political parties, religions, ideologies and even neighborhoods.

To further complicate matters, we live in a time - due to the emergence of mass media and the Internet - in which all of us are learning to "speak" many different dialects within these greater societal "languages."

If you think about it, you will see that your own family and friends sometimes use words and gestures that are unique to that group. We all use such social cues and special language to reinforce our social bonds. We know our "own" by how they talk.

Consider the possibility that all man-made artifacts in each unique environment - the buildings, furnishings, fashions, tools, technologies, art and architecture of our world - are also a form of language.

Seeing the world in this way provides an opportunity not only understand your family's unique "tongue," but to add words, expressions and phrases to that language.

Through this process, I believe it is possible to "create" new associations between your mind and your immediate environment.

By associating a particular object, room, symbol or condition within your home with a positive outcome in your life, you can focus more effectively on that result, and therefore make that part of your dream more likely to come true.

The positive results we achieve in life are most often the result of focusing our attention on something we desire, and then applying our wills towards that goal. In this manner, we achieve success.

Though our plans are always at risk in an uncertain world, life's failures are most often the result of inauthentic or unexamined goals; inaccurate assumptions about the nature of ourselves or our environment, or of a failure to apply sufficient attention to the objectives that are sought.

In the Far East, the ancient folk practice of Feng Shui has utilized similar methods for thousands of years. In Feng Shui, rooms, objects and architectural relationships are associated with aspects of life.

Prosperity, family, and health become external goals, out of the mind and into objective reality where they can be more effectively managed.

The process I am developing is not related to Feng Shui in any other significant way.

Feng Shui is rooted in mysticism, and my work is influenced by emerging science, but both systems use the "language" spoken by your home to support your ability to focus on aspects of life and the outcomes you desire.

Both methodologies use both the conscious and the automatic and unconscious functioning of your mind to enhance the living of your life.

I believe designing with this view in mind can bring warmth, vitality, diversity and relevance to residential architecture.

I believe the living architecture that we seek exists in each individual. It is embedded in the images, shadings, colors, syntax and content of each person's unique inner language.

It can be felt intuitively. We do not have to think about expressing it any more than we have to think to speak.