Obama has raregifts, great potential

Paul Gwin, Las Vegas

Thursday, April 3, 2008 | 2:03 a.m.

If a majority of voters don’t recognize Barack Obama’s potential greatness by now, we are doomed to miss one of history’s rare opportunities. This young man is the genuine article: He is honest, he is sound and practical in thought, and he is as articulate as anyone we’ve ever heard.

There probably hasn’t been anyone in government with such potential for bringing people together to work on U.S. problems since Abe Lincoln, and certainly not in my 84-year life span.

I like the way Susan Davis put it in a letter to the Sun on March 23: “Wake up, America! Do not condemn Sen. Barack Obama for his greatest strength. Listen to Obama’s speech on race. Read it. Feel it. Hope is not a mere word for Obama. Hope is what grows in our hearts what becomes palpable to our awareness when he bares the souls of opposing factions to simplify and unite our common humanity. How could Obama have written such a brilliant speech so filled with insight, courage, historical reference, compassion and caring, had he refused to stand beside people not deemed ‘politically correct’?”

One of the traits of a great leader is an eagerness to listen to others, to hear their thoughts and feelings and help put their ideas to work. Historians are just now discovering what Eastern pundits never did that Dwight Eisenhower was a great president as well as a general.

He had a genius for quietly organizing men, both generals and public servants with towering egos, and inspiring them to work together on lofty goals. But Ike wasn’t an orator. Barack is. That is a combination we sorely need to bring this country together again, to lead it out of the nearly impossible problems the Bush administration is leaving behind.

Barack’s speech on healing racial prejudice had the eloquence of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and quotes from it deserve a place in history.