OBAMA ONCE PROUD TO BE CALLED "ARTICULATE." Illinois Sen. Barack Obama's 2004 Senate campaign fliers boasted that he was "the most...articulate contender in [the] field," according to handouts paid for by Obama for Illinois, which I found while cleaning out my files earlier this week. (I travelled with the then-state senator for a couple of days in the summer of 2004, during which I picked up the material.) These fliers suggest that Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was unjustly pilloried by the press for racial insensitivity when he called Obama "articulate" in February. The remarks created a media firestorm just as Biden was launching his presidential exploratory committee. One flier, reproduced below, quotes Chicago Sun-Times political columnist Steve Neal saying that "Sen. Barack Obama (D-Chicago) is forging a coalition that could make him the only black U.S. senator. Obama...the most intelligent and articulate contender in [the] field...would be a senator worthy of the Land of Lincoln." The second flier, also below, truncates Neal's quote to "Obama...the most intelligent and articulate contender in [the] field...would be a senator worthy of the Land of Lincoln."
Obama, to his credit -- and perhaps remembering his own fliers -- Obama, to his credit -- and perhaps remembering his own fliers -- took the high road in February, saying that Biden "didn't intend to offend." "I didn't take Sen. Biden's comments personally," he said at the time in a statement, "but obviously they were historically inaccurate. African-American presidential candidates like Jesse Jackson, Shirley Chisholm, Carol Moseley Braun and Al Sharpton gave a voice to many important issues through their campaigns, and no one would call them inarticulate."
--Garance Franke-Ruta
