Scoop Link: Mr. Obama's Profile in Courage
The New York Times | Editorial
There are moments - increasingly rare in risk-abhorrent modern campaigns - when politicians are called upon to bare
their fundamental beliefs. In the best of these moments, the speaker does not just salve the current political wound,
but also illuminates larger, troubling issues that the nation is wrestling with.
Inaugural addresses by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt come to mind, as does John F. Kennedy's 1960 speech on
religion, with its enduring vision of the separation between church and state. Senator Barack Obama, who has not faced
such tests of character this year, faced one on Tuesday. It is hard to imagine how he could have handled it better.
Mr. Obama had to address race and religion, the two most toxic subjects in politics. He was as powerful and frank as
Mitt Romney was weak and calculating earlier this year in his attempt to persuade the religious right that his Mormonism
is Christian enough for them.
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