//REACTION

Newsweek

The speech was one of the defining moments of his presidential run, rivaling his widely heralded victory addresses following his wins in Iowa and South Carolina. Obama broke with the pattern, played out by both major contenders for the Democratic nomination, of distancing themselves from controversial supporters, applauding their resignations and plunging back into the talking points. Obama used the constant harping on Wright’s strident remarks as an opening to delve into the thorny complications of race in America

Toby Harnden, The Daily Telegraph (UK)

It was undoubtedly a very powerful speech – ambitious, eloquent, emotional, passionate, ambitious, challenging, risky and intensely personal. Obama went a long way towards striking the difficult balance of repudiating Wright’s outrageous comments while placing them in the context of Wright’s broader achievements and life as well as the American black experience.

Trey Ellis, Yahoo News

Obama’s speech just now was magnificent not because he relied on soaring rhetoric but because he eschewed it. He spoke simply and directly about one of the third rails of American politics from his unique vantage point as a black man with white ancestors and the child of an immigrant. His analysis was measured and brilliant in how he empathized with disgruntled and cynical black youths defeated by racism, but urged them to transcend; how he also empathized with struggling white workers unsympathetic to America’s history of discrimination and yet urged them, too, to join in the fight to better this nation. What he did this morning in Philadelphia was put his theory of change into practice.

Dan Balz, Washington Post

Neither Obama nor his advisers can know at this point where the Wright controversy will lead. It is not likely that one speech, however well-crafted, can put it to rest. But the test of leadership is to turn adversity into opportunity and on Tuesday Obama took it. Now he must await the judgment of the voters.

Todd Gitlin, The New Republic

Obama kept his cool and turned up the heat at the same time. For those who have not yet voted, and crucially to the superdelegates, he raised the stakes, asking them all: Can you, too, keep your cool and your heat at the same time? The Reverend Jeremiah Wright, he said, had spoken in an “incendiary” manner, but Obama offered himself as the man who rises from flames and invites you to rise from your own. He took a grievous embarrassment and moved his lesson to the plane of prophecy. Talk about hope; talk about audacity. Tears came to my eyes. I don’t think I’m especially hard-hearted, but I cannot think of another time when the speech of a presidential candidate watered me up.

RedState

Like Mitt Romney’s speech, it will only serve to remind Americans of that which Obama hopes they will forget. In Obama’s case, that Mr. Being Above Race has shown judgment poor enough to designate as his mentor a man profoundly embittered by this country and who believes the white man killed Jesus and now distributes AIDS to kill all the black men.

John Fallows, Atlantic.com

It was a moment that Obama made great through the seriousness, intelligence, eloquence, and courage of what he said. I don’t recall another speech about race with as little pandering or posturing or shying from awkward points, and as much honest attempt to explain and connect, as this one.

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