Obama Must Do More Than Just Give a Speech

I am happy that Barack Obama will give a historic speech today about race and American politics. It has the potential to be an historic one. [This will be updated with a link to the actual speech when it becomes available]

And the comparisons to John F. Kennedy's 1960 speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association about his religion are apt and legitimate.

But, less well known is that JKF didn't merely give a speech that day. He also stayed after the speech and took sometimes very tough questions from a skeptical audience for a good period of time. [Click here for a video of the entire event, including the Q&A session afterward]

The question and answer period, I think, had at least as much to do with assuaging concerns about Kennedy as the speech itself.

I believe Senator Obama must also hold a town hall meeting in white Catholic and ethnic strongholds in Pennsylvania as a follow up to ths speech, where skeptical voters can have a chance to ask him tough questions about Reverend Wright and Obama's own beliefs about race in America.

This face to face conversation, following up his speech, will in my opinion help him more than the speech alone.

And, I think this may actually turn out to be a benefit for Senator Obama. Because since Ohio and Texas, Obama has been caught in a tit for tat sniping war with Hillary Clinton that made Obama seem like a conventional politician.

The transcendant nature of his candidacy has been lost to some extent. And this whole Jeremiah Wright controversy, in an ironic way, gives him a tremendous opportunity to do what he does best -- talk about grand and serious themes about where we are as a nation, and where we want to be.

When he is addressing these broad themes, of inclusion and breaking free from the old politics that has brought us to this precipice, he is at his best as a candidate, and as a leader.

Obama today, and in the weeks that follow, will hopefully seize back the high ground and remind voters of why they supported him in the first place.

This whole episode may actually make Obama, and our country, stronger.

Let's hope that is the case. Because our country cannot afford to stay the course we are on.