Above: “A More Perfect Union” pamphlet by Sam Potts Inc. (Photos by Swissmiss.)
I arrived home tonight and found the small booklet above in the day’s post. It was a simple republication of Barack Obama’s “A More Perfect Union” speech sent by my friend and fellow AIGA/NY Board Member Sam Potts. I’ve written about the power of pamphlets before, but this one moved me a great deal. It came on a day when Obama, a candidate whose campaign was still reeling from the release of the Rev Wright tapes when he gave this speech last March, was about to give his first primetime press conference as President. And it came on a day when Amazon.com announced the Kindle 2, a device that may successfully uncouple print from the page for good. While Obama’s election made me feel young at heart, the Kindle 2’s release left me gripped by the sense that I was glimpsing the future while clinging the past. In short, I felt, for the first time, middle-aged. And while I can see myself buying and even enjoying a Kindle 2, I’m a book person at heart, and always will be. It’s like someone asked me to swap my beloved pet for a Tamagotchi. No dice.
When Obama concluded his press conference this evening, I turned off the TV, sat in my chair, and read Sam’s pamphlet from start to finish. He had carefully chosen this small manila envelope, this beautiful slate-blue paper, and this optimistic, tipped-in note. He had offered me Obama’s speech again at the perfect time in a new and beautiful way. I was deeply touched. Sometimes things come together as they should. Sam’s pamphlet is a case in point.
Below is the passage from Obama’s “A More Perfect Union” speech that I remembered as vividly when I read it tonight as when I first heard it on YouTube last March. As Republicans and Democrats sit in deadlock over the stimulus bill while America’s tide of unemployment swells dangerously higher, Obama’s call to transcend bitter partisanship and stand for hope in the midst of cyncism rings truer than ever.
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle—as we did in the OJ trial—or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina—or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies. We can do that. But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change. That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” […] I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation—the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.
And make history we did. Should you want to revisit the speech too, NYT has the text of Obama’s speech in its entirety here. Thanks, Sam.
