Obama's political speech of a lifetime

WASHINGTON
NO MATTER how memorable the speech Barack Obama gives today for his inauguration as the 44th president of the United States, he might not have become the nation's first African-American president had he fumbled a single word 10 months ago in his speech on race in Philadelphia. Asked if Obama would have been elected if he had faltered in the furor over the comments of Obama's former pastor Jeremiah Wright, senior adviser David Axelrod said, "Maybe not."

Wright became famous for decrying the "US of KKK A" and declaring "God damn America." Obama issued statements such as, "I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies . . . I reject outright the statements by Reverend Wright."

They were not enough. "You didn't need a PhD in politics to figure that out," Axelrod said in an interview last week. "The long-term effects of it were not knowable at that point, but the assumption was that unabated it could be a real problem."

A few days before his March speech, Axelrod said, Obama flew back to Chicago at 1 in the morning, originally to prepare for meetings at the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. Axelrod said Obama "came to the headquarters. He was supposed to brief for the editorial boards. Instead, he wrote a statement [about Wright] out himself. He didn't like what the campaign had written about Reverend Wright.

"He went off to the editorial boards, three hours of editorial boards of both papers. Did two or three cable shows on Reverend Wright, and called [campaign manager David] Plouffe and me at 10 or 11 and said, 'I want to do this speech on race. I want to put this thing in its proper perspective. I think this is an important moment.' He said, 'People may accept what I have to say or not, but it's an important moment in terms of dealing with the elephant in the room and I want to make this speech . . . I have to write this speech myself.' "

Obama wrote in the middle of the night the two nights before the speech.

Last month, Axelrod told a post-election forum at Harvard University's Institute of Politics that at 2 a.m. the day of the speech, he woke up to find it on his BlackBerry. After reading it, Axelrod e-mailed Obama back to say, "This is why you should be president."

The speech, an unprecedented combination of nuanced history lesson and an urging of everyone to understand each other's feelings, was all but acclaimed by most newspaper editorials. In an interview in Philadelphia three weeks later, Obama told me, "I think that people always appreciate those moments where a politician's not talking in sound bites but trying to speak honestly about a question. So I don't know what the political effect of it may be . . . But I think what people want is common sense."

Election night proved the political effect. With the economy in the tank, and a needless war, Americans yearned for common sense. Axelrod called it a "presidential moment," where the nation got to see Obama "speak to the nation on something of real significance under great pressure," projecting the "qualities that people ultimately responded to."

Asked what he thought was the hardest part of the speech for Obama to give, Axelrod said, "I think it was the section in which he talked about his grandmother (and her racial perceptions). I think that was a very personal revelation . . . such a personal observation."

Axelrod said that when he looked into the audience that day, he saw tears running down the cheeks of Michelle Obama and longtime friends Marty Nesbitt and Valerie Jarrett.

"It was just a proud moment," Axelrod said.

"Here was a guy who was standing up and saying things that needed to be said, understanding that there was a great risk to saying them, and completely confident.

"When it was over, we went into an anteroom. Everybody was in tears. All I remember is Barack saying, 'I think that was solid.' "

As solid as the stone of the White House.

Derrick Z. Jackson can be reached at jackson@globe.com.