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OBAMA'S INNER CHURCH LADY. One cool thing about listening to candidates on the stump is that you get to see them do and say all kinds of things that don't have news value -- and so won't generally get reported -- but which are nonetheless interesting and revealing. For example, Barack Obama, who is often criticized for his cool, cerebral style, brought down the house Saturday night at the Hawkeye Labor Council Presidential Forum in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, with an impassioned call and response chant that had the whole rowdy union crowd on its feet, cheering. He did it by ending his remarks with a little story that, he said, "indicates what one voice can do." Here's Obama whipping up the crowd:
I was down in a little town in South Carolina called Greenwood, South Carolina and I had been driving two hours to get there. The only reason I was going was there was a state representative who said she’d endorse me if I showed up in Greenwood. And I didn’t know how far it was, and I had to wake up early to get there, and it was rainin’ and I was feeling kind of grumpy. And I get to Greenwood and there’s this small building and I walk in and, after driving two hours, there only about 20, 30 people. And everybody’s kinda feeling sleepy and look like they’re a little grumpy too. And I’m shaking hands and doing what I’m supposed to be doin’ and suddenly I hear in the back, this woman says, “Fired up!” and I look. It’s this tiny woman, she’s maybe five-two, five-three, wearing sort of a church dress and a big hat. And it turns out she was the city councilwoman and she repeated, “Fired up!” And finally everyone in the room says, “Fired up!” and she said, “Ready to go!” And she says, “Ready to go!” And after she did this for about three minutes I gotta admit I started feeling kinda fired up. [applause] And I was ready to go. And that’s what this election’s about, about each of us individually getting fired up. [applause] Each of us getting ready to go, to take back America, to take back this country. [inaudible, applause] America, are you fired up? Ready to go? Fired up! Ready to go! Fired up! Ready to go! Alright [inaudible, applause, cheering] let’s go get em!This is apparently part of Obama's routine stump speech that he brings out when the occasion seems right, as before before black audiences, or, in this case, a working class one. But I've never seen him do it in Washington, and you won't catch him doing it during televised debates.
--Garance Franke-Ruta
