3rd Floor Balcony

There is something surreal about Barack Obama's speech this morning addressing the issue of race. It is the kind of message that everyone should watch. And think about. And act on.

The situation (for those who need the primer) is this: In recent days, media clips have been circulating of Obama's fiery pastor, Jeremiah Wright, ranting against America and launching incendiary racial comments. The basic question is how can one trust Obama when we is so closely linked to this firebrand preacher. All this, on the heels of a Clinton fundraiser, Geraldine Ferraro, who made similarly incendiary comments that Obama's success is only because he is black. Both parties have since seen each character step down from whatever position they held, but the tie to Wright, as the pastor who officiated Obama's wedding and baptized his children, seemed like a major blow. This pot was coming to a boil, and today Obama got up on stage and faced it dead on.

It was surreal, because it felt like a TV show. This wasn't real, it was the climax of some drama, like an after-school special with better production value. It was a politician who came down with a real and substantial rebuttal on a key issue and brought a community together. It was evocative.

But it was real.

This was not a standard party line, it was not a strategy or tactic. It was a conviction that things are drastically wrong, but are so close to being right. And it was purposed to right it. He came back to the point, again and again, that we are not just what our history has made us but we are becoming perfect. As a Christian, he wasn't talking about some self-anointed godhood, but took the small politics of small people, the politicking we've started to see surface the past month, and brushed it aside to say, we're better than that.

We are better than that. And it says here, that if New Hampshire was the battle cry, Philadelphia is the turning point.