Thoughts on Obama’s eulogy of John Lewis

I had heard that President Obama’s eulogy of John Lewis was “hyper partisan,” so I decided to read it for myself. You can read the full text here.

It’s actually quite good, up to a point, and then it does become partisan.

Now this country is a constant work in progress. We’re born with instructions: To form a more perfect union. Explicit in those words is the idea that we’re imperfect, …

True enough.

… that what gives each new generation purpose is to take up the unfinished work of the last and carry it further than anyone might have thought possible.

As stated, I can’t really disagree with that, but I feel there’s an implication to those words that I don’t like, which is that the primary duty of every American is to change rather than to preserve.

Obviously we should do both. Liberals focus on change, conservatives focus on preservation. There’s a reason we have both instincts. Both are necessary.

Obama then goes on to highlight some of the brave things Rep. Lewis did over the years, for which we should all be grateful. Rep. Lewis was a good and brave man in many ways. He stared down billy clubs, police dogs, tear gas, and a level of brutality and intolerance that’s shocking. But he remained — by all accounts — a humble and kind man.

It vindicated the faith in our founding, redeemed that faith, that most American of ideas, that any of us without rank or wealth or title or fame can somehow point out the imperfections of this hero and come together and challenge the status quo and decide that it is in our power to remake this country that we love until it more closely aligns with our highest ideals. What a radical idea. What a revolutionary notion, this idea that any of us ordinary people, a young kid from Troy, can stand up to the powers and principalities and say, no this isn’t right, this isn’t true, this isn’t just. We can do better.

Well said. If Obama had stopped right there, it would have been a tremendous speech.

But of course he didn’t, because he’s a partisan lefty.

Bull Connor may be gone, but today, we witnessed with our own eyes police officers kneeling on the necks of Black Americans. George Wallace may be gone, but we can witness our federal government sending agents to use tear gas and batons against peaceful demonstrators. We may no longer have to guess the number of jellybeans in the jar in order to cast a ballot, but even as we sit here, there are those in power who are doing their darnedest to discourage people from voting by closing polling locations and targeting minorities and students with restrictive ID laws and attacking our voting rights with surgical precision, even undermining the Postal Service in the run-up to an election that’s gonna be dependent on mail-in ballots so people don’t get sick.

That was unworthy of President Obama, and unnecessary. And then he added some partisan stuff about the Voting Rights Act.

I know there’s an election coming up, so everybody feels the need to rally the troops. But I wish Obama had stopped while he was ahead.