Yesterday Charles Murray had a post about a week’s worth of commentary on the big Obama speech, and I wrote that Murray was being uncharitable toward Obama’s critics. A friend of mine then wrote me a note:

You really think so? I don’t think he’s being uncharitable, at least not towards what I’ve seen in the Corner this week. I’ve been spending a ridiculous amount of time thinking about this speech and the week and reading *way* too much about it, and I ultimately come down somewhere near where Murray does. Nearly all of my conservative political friends think Obama is just a fraud, and I’m ready to believe the same, but I really don’t. I think this guy is, like Murray says, something different. (I fear him politically because of that.) Sure, he’s a politician and he’s dancing around a bit to survive and we can all have all kinds of fun trying to psychoanalyze him, but Murray is just right that the speech is far more elaborate and interesting than pretty much any race speech we’ve ever heard from any political figure, and it was far more complex and nuanced *than was politically necessary.* Sure, the complexity plays to the media and it plays to superdelegates, but again, it wasn’t necessary to go as far as he did. He played a cheap game with Ferraro, but his grandmother? Again, Murray describes that just as I saw it when I first heard it – although I received 4 different emails disgusted by it within 10 minutes, so I know there was an instinctive backlash. I think our conservative friends have so lapsed into campaign mode that they are just desperately trying to shove Obama into conventional boxes. It just comes off as wooden and stale and unimaginative. In the Corner in particular, it’s as though the forum wanted to transform itself into an anti-Obama War Room. God knows McCain won’t do it. Maybe it all works politically. Obviously it’s crucial to get him defined as “the candidate who is more obsessed with race than Osama” and as far closer to Sharpton than King, but there’s a dishonesty at the core of conservative attacks if there isn’t an acknowledgment that, as Murray says, this speech was different. I know you said as much; not sure most conservatives really have. Last thing: Murray’s most salient point, it seems to me, is that we have *some* obligation to operate in good faith and to assume that politicians are trying to convey a truth when they speak like this, that it’s not all crass positioning. We have to operate with a sort of parallel analysis, to see the political angles clearly, yes, also to endeavor to understand what the speech means based on its text and spirit. Clinton made this extremely difficult to do and his wife has only made it worse, but everyone isn’t like those cretins. It seems such a shame that we can’t even consider the possibility that there’s an authentic effort blended in with the political positioning. Murray is saying that there clearly was such an effort here and that it’s a shame that critics aren’t at least acknowledging it. I agree.

My objection to Murray was his assumption, both untrue and undefended, that you can’t in good faith criticize Obama’s speech: that the only reason to criticize it is “if you want to go after him.” I think in large part the intra-conservative divide over Obama’s speech comes down to whether you look at it as an account of black-white relations in America or as an account of his relationship with the Rev. Wright. As a “race speech,” I agree that Obama’s speech was pretty good–although I’m not sure it was better than, say, former President Clinton’s best speeches on the subject. As an account of his relationship with the Rev. Wright, which was after all the reason he gave the speech in the first place, I think it was inadequate. (Indeed, I think it was wrong for Obama to try to change the subject from the latter to the former.) I do not think that conservatives who approach the speech via Wright are simply failing to be as open-minded as Murray.

I suppose that I am also less inclined to place great importance on good speeches by politicians about race. Perhaps I am undervaluing them.

Two minor points: First, on the matter of Obama’s grandmother, which both Murray and my friend touch on, I think Mona Charen’s column puts it in a new light. The version of the story Obama gave in his speech is rather different from the one he gave in his book. Second, I think Obama is being judged too harshly for the “typical white person” comment. It is true that there is a double standard here, where people are not allowed to say “typical black person” even in a similarly well-meaning way. But the double standard should be attacked from the right end.