From Marcelline:

I Was There: What Obama Really Said About Pennsylvania

Posted April 14, 2008 | 11:54 AM (EST)

Last Sunday evening I attended the San Francisco fundraiser that has
been the center of recent political jousting. The next day, when asked
about the talk Obama delivered, I too commented about his answer to a
question he was asked about Pennsylvania. Over the past week, though, I
have had a Rashomon-like experience concerning those remarks.

Clinton, McCain, and media pundits have parsed a blogger's audio tape
of Obama's remarks and criticized a sentence or two characterizing some
parts of Pennsylvania and the attitudes of some Pennsylvanians. In
context and in person, Senator Obama's remarks about Pennsylvania
voters left an impression diametrically opposed to that being trumpeted
by his competitor's campaigns.

At the end of Obama's remarks standing between two rooms of guests --
the fourth appearance in California after traveling earlier in the day
from Montana -- a questioner asked, "some of us are going to
Pennsylvania to campaign for you. What should we be telling the voters
we encounter?"

Obama's response to the questioner was that there are many, many
different sections in Pennsylvania comprised of a range of racial,
geographic, class, and economic groupings from Appalachia to
Philadelphia. So there was not one thing to say to such diverse
constituencies in Pennsylvania. But having said that, Obama went on say
that his campaign staff in Pennsylvania could provide the questioner
(an imminent Pennsylvania volunteer) with all the talking points he
needed. But Obama cautioned that such talking points were really not
what should be stressed with Pennsylvania voters.

Instead he urged the volunteer to tell Pennsylvania voters he
encountered that Obama's campaign is about something more than programs
and talking points. It was at this point that Obama began to talk about
addressing the bitter feelings that many in some rural communities in
Pennsylvania have about being brushed aside in the wake of the global
economy. Senator Obama appeared to theorize, perhaps improvidently
given the coverage this week, that some of the people in those
communities take refuge in political concerns about guns, religion and
immigration. But what has not so far been reported is that those
statements preceded and were joined with additional observations that
black youth in urban areas are told they are no longer "relevant" in
the global economy and, feeling marginalized, they engage in
destructive behavior. Unlike the week's commentators who have seized
upon the remarks about "bitter feelings" in some depressed communities
in Pennsylvania, I gleaned a different meaning from the entire answer.

First, I noted immediately how dismissive his answer had been about
"talking points" and ten point programs and how he used the question to
urge the future volunteer to put forward a larger message central to
his campaign. That pivot, I thought, was remarkable and unique. Rather
than his seizing the opportunity to recite stump-worn talking points at
that time to the audience -- as I believe Senator Clinton, Senator
McCain and most other more conventional (or more disciplined)
politicians at such an appearance might do -- Senator Obama took a
different political course in that moment, one that symbolizes
important differences about his candidacy.

The response that followed sounded unscripted, in the moment, as if he
were really trying to answer a question with intelligent conversation
that explained more about what was going on in the Pennsylvania
communities than what was germane to his political agenda. I had never
heard him or any politician ever give such insightful, analytical
responses. The statements were neither didactic nor contrived to
convince. They were simply hypotheses (not unlike the kind made by de
Tocqueville three centuries ago ) offered by an observer familiar with
American communities. And that kind of thoughtfulness was quite
unexpected in the middle of a political event. In my view, the way he
answered the question was more important than the sociological accuracy
or the cause and effect hypotheses contained in the answer. It was a
moment of authenticity demonstrating informed intelligence, and the
speaker's desire to have the audience join him in a deeper
understanding of American politics.

There has been little or no reaction to the part of the answer that
was addressed to the hopelessness of inner city youth who have been
rendered "irrelevant" to the global economy. No one has seized upon
those words as "talking down" to the inner city youth whose plight he
was addressing. If extracted from an audio tape HuffPost Blogger
Fowler, those remarks could (and may yet) be taken out of context as
"Obama excuses alienation and violence by urban youth." But in context,
Senator Obama's response sounded like empathetic conclusions and
opinions of a keen observer: more like Margaret Mead than Machiavelli.

As the week's firestorm evolved over these remarks at which I was an
accidental observer, I have reflected upon the regrettable irony that
has emerged from Senator Obama's response to a friendly question: no
good effort at intelligent analysis, candor -- and what I heard as an
attempt to convey a profound understanding of both what people feel and
why they feel it - goes unpunished. Such insights by a political
candidate might otherwise be valued. In a national campaign subject to
opposition research, his analytical musing has instead created an
immense amount of political flak.

Now and "in this time," to invoke one of the candidate's favorite
riffs, such observations and remarks shared among supporters are just a
push of a record button on a tape recorder away from being spread
across the internet to be dissected by political nabobs. What struck me
immediately after the fundraiser as so refreshing turned out to be a
moment Senator Obama is forced to regret. Today we marvel at de
Tocqueville insights about American communities. Apparently, such
commentary is valued as long as it is three centuries old and doesn't
come from the mouth of a contemporary observer who might be elected
president.

So much for the political ironies. But there is one more personal
observation that was missed.

I happened to be on the balcony when Senator Obama's vehicles arrived
and he emerged from the Secret Service SUV. Obama shouted the friendly
greeting "How are you guys up there doing?" to the group of us looking
down from the balcony and then said, "You have to excuse me, I need to
call my kids in Chicago now." All of us stood and watched the leading
candidate for the Democratic party nomination for president have a
short conversation with his kids before he entered a fundraiser to make
his remarks.

No tape of that conversation has emerged as yet. Who knows how casual
remarks of a father to his children or his wife on a cell phone could
be spun to support the argument that as a father speaking to his kids
two time zones away before they go to bed, his comments sounded as if
he "looked down" upon them. Given his relative height and the age of
his kids, he probably does. But that would be precisely as relevant to
his capacity to unite and lead this country as were the remarks at the
fundraiser that have been so deconstructed over this past week.