We have not yet arrived at this longed for place. For all the progress we have made, there are times when the land of our dreams recedes from us – when we are lost, wandering spirits, content with our suspicions and our angers, our long-held grudges and petty disputes, our frantic diversions and tribal allegiances. ~Sen. Barack Obama

Obama’s speech at the groundbreaking for a Martin Luther King, Jr. monument was rich in the sepia tone commonplaces of our degraded political rhetoric.  The speech had it all: the obligatory Scripture verse, talk of an American “creed,” the quasi-poetic jumble of images, the prattle about hope, the blather about justice, the de rigueur allusion to slavery as our “original sin,” the inevitable nod to Lincoln, and, of course, the obnoxious comparison of the subject of praise with some holy and revered figure (in this case King as another Moses), finishing it all off with the grand, saccharine appeal:

And that each generation is beckoned anew, to fight for what is right, and strive for what is just, and to find within itself the spirit, the sense of purpose, that can remake a nation and transform a world.

Let us suppose that we don’t want to remake nations or transform worlds.  What do we make of Obama’s adulation for the new Moses then? 

The funny thing is that the speech was pitch-perfect for the broad middle of this country.  People will eat up this sort of thing and come back asking for more.  Whoever writes Obama’s speeches is unfortunately only too good at pushing all of the electorate’s buttons.  All of this hope of a better day and talk of the Promised Land gets Americans excited, though I swear I have difficulty understanding why they find it appropriate to degrade sacred history by making it the backdrop for political speechifying. 

Contrary to some of my blogging colleagues, not all of us deeply hope for Barack Obama’s political success, because not all of us want to elect an empty suit and a pretty face.  Frankly, I think Americans, but especially black Americans, deserve a more substantial representative than Obama is capable of being.  We may not deserve better political rhetoric than the tripe we do get, but it would be awfully nice if we did.