What Obama will say at the March on Washington
ANALYSIS - President Obama won't be giving his version of the "I Have a Dream" speech next Wednesday at the anniversary of the March on Washington...
President Obama won’t be giving his version of the “I Have a Dream” speech next Wednesday at the anniversary of the March on Washington.
Administration officials say the president is fully aware that Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered one of the most moving addresses in American history 50 years ago, and that Obama shouldn’t try to match that level of rhetoric. He is not expected to deliver an extended meditation on race in America or issue the kind of challenge that King did.
Obama is also unlikely to speak in the personal tone that he used last month in discussing George Zimmerman’s acquittal and the racial divide that emerged from it. He’s almost certain not to use words like “Jim Crow” (Eric Holder) and “voter suppression” (Hillary Clinton) in criticizing a spate of controversial Republican-backed voting laws that black leaders say are eroding some of the gains that the civil rights movement made.
“Spoiler alert. It will be good, but it won’t be the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech,” top Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer told the New York Times.
Instead, the president is mostly focused on marking a major moment in American history, honoring King and other civil rights leaders, and acknowledging his role as a successor to the people who lead the movement in 1960s. He will be joined by two ex-presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, as well as thousands of people from around the country at the Lincoln Memorial.
His other goal, according to administration officials, is linking racial issues with his broader plans to improve the American economy. The president firmly believes that enacting his policy agenda, from making it cheaper to attend college to creating more middle-class jobs, will help African-Americans more than anything he says in a speech. He is likely to make that case again on Wednesday.
The speech is likely to disappoint the African-American activists and professors, like Columbia’s Frederick Harris, who want the president to speak more forcefully on race.
But it comes at a time when the administration is increasingly enacting policies that black leaders strongly support. The Justice Department over the last month has announced a new legal strategy to fight controversial voting laws in states like Texas, as well as pledged to stop charging drug offenders with crimes that trigger mandatory minimum sentences.
Obama recently met with key black leaders to look for ways to rewrite the Voting Rights Act after the Supreme Court struck down its Section 4.
And Obama has already given a very memorable, powerful speech on race. His remarks about Trayvon Martin didn’t just dominate news coverage for days, give a rare window into the president’s thinking on race and powerfully illustrate the importance of having a president who has also had the experience of being a black man in America. That speech was one of the most moving addresses any recent president has given on any subject.
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