At the end of the day, Saturday, I got home after being at a event honoring women in the military – a post on that to follow – and sat down to check the news. In the New York Times, under the article on the Pope and the latest sex scandals, was an article saying Obama Rallies Democrats in Final Push for Health Care.
The article talked about exactly what the headline said but it didn't, in my opinion, really capture the moment. C-SPAN did with the meeting on video – I guess we can't really say video-tape any more – and it was truly extraordinary. Who ever called the meeting to order, first talked about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and how she was going to do something that no other House Speaker has been able to do.
About that time, Michele came in and said I am hungry. I said I am too, let's go out and get something to eat. But I want to watch this for a minute. We started watching the meeting again, at the beginning, and and an hour later, we finally went out to dinner. Feeling much better about America. If you have an hour, watch the meeting here, you won't regret it.
To quote Michael Scherer in his article titled Without A Teleprompter, in Time's Swampland:
We knew president Obama would give a speech today to House Democrats.
We didn't know it would be this good of a speech. The video below is
just the last ten minutes of an address that lasted about 30 minutes.I suggest you start watching at 2 minutes. The president takes his
caucus on the political equivalent of a guided meditation. Assuming the
bill passes, this is political rhetoric for the history books.
Thanks for sharing this, Steve. I’ve had conversations with friends who supported Obama and were starting to have doubts about him. We agree that his ideals are in line with ours, but start to wonder if he is strong enough and savy enough to succeed in actually creating change. I do not follow politics closely enough to debate the finer points of his methods and I feel that even those who do are subject to unquantifiable distortions and interpretations as they gather info. That leaves me, once again, depending on my feeling as to whether I trust the man or not. I do. His success with health care (with Pelosi’s support – thanks for that too) and this speech really renew my confidence. We are a many times more fortunate to have a person like Obama manifest here and now as we were unfortunate to have had Bush appear when he did.
Thanks for the comments, Courtney. I am one of those who had high hopes for Obama – I worked on his primary campaign – and began to worry that he was getting his ass kicked. I am much more hopeful now. He definitely seems to being playing the long game.
And Steve I keep reminding myself that early in the campaign you were the one telling me that he was playing the long game. Thanks