Audacity

I read Barack Obama’s announcement of candidacy, but skipped watching the video. I’m hoping to postpone at least until spring the moment when I am heartily sick of hearing Obama praise his own “audacity.”

He made his announcement at the very spot where Abraham Lincoln made a speech in 1858 in a failed run for the Senate in which he called for the nation not to split. How’d that turn out again?

He mentioned his time in the Illinois State Senate, where he learned that “it’s possible to compromise so long as you know those principles that can never be compromised; and that so long as we’re willing to listen to each other, we can assume the best in people instead of the worst. It’s why we were able to reform a death penalty system that was broken.” Because when you think of uncompromised principles and assuming the best in people, you think death penalty.