Likely Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama pulled o
ff a pair of campaign appearances that will be difficult to combat. Of course, anything can have a negative spin put on it, if you try hard enough.BUT OBAMA SPENT a couple of hours Saturday in Quincy, Ill., where he offered a hand with flood-relief efforts. Then on Sunday, he and his family attended their first service at their new church, and Obama gave a speech worthy of the most self-righteously moral of conservatives.
Obama’s appearance in the western Illinois city is the one that most catches my attention. It is not at all unusual for a political person to show up at a disaster site and go through the motions of pretending to be in charge or of studying the scene so as to figure out in the future what could have been done now to help people.
The typical campaign event would have utilized the relief efforts along the Mississippi River by having Obama step in, shake a few hands, perhaps offer an encouraging word to the person who was coordinating the effort, then get out of town – all before the cuffs of his pants became wet or soiled.
Obama went a step further. I can’t think of any political candidate who ever did anything comparable to actually grabbing a shovel and helping to fill the sandbags that were then put in place to try to erect a barrier to the floodwater that threatened the homes of many Quincy residents.
AT A TIME when floodwaters are expected to reach a level of 32 feet by mid-week, any physical labor has to be appreciated. The notion that Obama would be willing to risk dirtying himself can only help bolster his image.
Admittedly, the effort was not comparable to the hours of backbreaking work being done by the local residents who are trying to keep their homes from being destroyed. Obama had help in putting together sandbags, and he quit shoveling after about a half-hour. In fact, his whole time in the western Illinois city only lasted about 1.5 hours – squeezed in between campaign appearances in Pennsylvania and Chicago.
But Obama is still (at least for five more months, if not longer) Illinois’ junior senator – one who has a $60 billion reinvestment bill pending that could help Midwestern communities rebuild from the floods and tornadoes that have struck the region this spring.
He is in a position to fight for Illinois in Congress and ensure that federal disaster authorities do not neglect the state as they have to cope with providing assistance to disaster sites all across the Great Lakes and Plains states – particularly the severe flooding that has left all of downtown Cedar Rapids, Iowa and much of the surrounding area under water.
OBAMA USED HIS presidential campaign to bolster the awareness of his home state’s problem, and he helped boost the morale of the relief workers – some of whom will now remember the Flood of ’08 as the occasion when they met a potential president of the U.S., and not just the time they nearly lost their home.
It also can’t help but strengthen the campaign’s hand in Adams County, which like much of rural Illinois is solid Republican territory where many locals can’t understand why Illinois is considered a “blue” state – since many of the people who live there don’t know any Democrats personally.
One day later, Obama went to church.
Normally, that wouldn’t be such a big deal, as many presidential candidates like to celebrate their faith as publicly as possible to try to appeal for votes.
BUT FOR THE Obama family, this Sunday would have been a big deal regardless. The Obamas have joined the Apostolic Church of God, which is a few blocks from their Hyde Park neighborhood home, and this was their first time as a family at their new church.
Now I could envision how the “right” would go after Obama for this event – they would emphasize the reason he had to find a new church to attend in the first place. The Trinity United Church of Christ where he had attended for nearly 20 years had become too much of a political hotbed, due to its retired (and outspoken) pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and its guest speaker of a few weeks ago – Rev. Michael Pfleger.
They would want to denounce the move as opportunistic and one meant to cover up the viewpoints expressed by the pastors who they do not agree with.
But Obama undermined such rhetoric by speaking to the congregation at Sunday’s service. Newcomer Obama caught the attention of the congregation, giving a speech that lambasted men who father children, then pay little to no attention to their offspring.
“TOO MANY FATHERS are M.I.A., too many fathers are AWOL, missing from too many lives and too many homes,” Obama told the inner city Chicago congregation. “They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it.”
This is the message that the social conservatives would like to think they own. Video of Obama giving this speech could literally be trotted out any time the conservatives start on their “schpiel” that Obama is some liberal freak who is grossly out of touch with their moral values.
That doesn’t mean they won’t try to twist the message.
THESE ARE, AFTER all, the same people who took 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry’s military service record during the Vietnam War and twisted it into something that appeared to be less than that of Republican opponent George W. Bush, who may (or may not) have served a full stint in the Texas National Guard.
But the images created this weekend (filling sandbags and speaking about family values in church) are the kind that go a long way toward Obama defining his own image for the American people – before Republican opponent John McCain can do it for him.
He may have had his staff schedule them as part of a campaign effort, but they will help him keep the slight lead that various polls (the Gallup Organization on Sunday showed him leading 44 percent to 42 percent) show him with, if Election Day were today instead of five months from now.
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EDITOR’S NOTES: Most political people would have grabbed the shovel for a couple of seconds (http://www.whig.com/story/Obama-at-OLC-SUN), allowed a photograph to be taken, then would have moved on.
Could a white presidential candidate have gotten away with speaking as bluntly as Barack Obama did (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/16/us/politics/15cnd-obama.html?em&ex=1213675200&en=2bc9b40e6e36087e&ei=5087%0A) to a mostly-black churchgoing audience about the problems facing African-American families?
Illinois' answer to C-SPAN, the Illinois Channel (http://illinoischannel.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!B0DB128F5CD96151!3465.entry) gives us a text of what Obama told his new church's congregation.
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