Abraham Lincoln

NY Times: Obama’s Speech Raises Discussion to Higher Plane

By John Stephenson | March 18, 2008 - 23:09 ET

Its been a rewarding yet predictable day as one liberal after another have fallen all over themselves to praise Obama's speech. One of the more outrageous ones was Chris Matthews stating the speech went beyond the "I Have a Dream" speech, and compared it Lincoln. Now the NY Times bows down to Obamessiah as he rises from the ashes.

There are moments — increasingly rare in risk-abhorrent modern campaigns — when politicians are called upon to bare their fundamental beliefs. In the best of these moments, the speaker does not just salve the current political wound, but also illuminates larger, troubling issues that the nation is wrestling with.
Inaugural addresses by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt come to mind, as does John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech on religion, with its enduring vision of the separation between church and state. Senator Barack Obama, who has not faced such tests of character this year, faced one on Tuesday. It is hard to imagine how he could have handled it better…