Obama's speech on race probably the most imporant political speech of our lifetimes

So it's not happening at Ellis Island, but it's just as good, maybe better.

Obama will speak at the National Constitution Center near Philadelphia's Independence Hall, where the nation's founders in 1787 drafted a Constitution that counted each slave as three-fifths of a person. 

History sure has a funny way of coming full circle. 

The first thing I expect tomorrow is to have it made abundantly clear that Mitt Romney's absurd "speech on religion" was a complete and total joke.  Barack Obama is not the kind of guy to give a big speech about a big issue with big risks for himself that ends up being a big fat nothing.  This speech will certainly be a something. 

In fact, I think this speech will determine whether or not Barack Obama becomes the first black president of the United States.  In that sense, it is probably the most important political speech anyone has given in my lifetime. 

It is an undeniable fact that any black man running for president would have to go through precisely what Barack Obama has been going through since January. Tomorrow's speech is just another obstacle on that road.  I'm sure Barack has known for a long time that this day was coming.  In fact, in this country's history, I'm sure every serious thinking person committed to racial reconcilliation has known that, too.  It is a speech that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., most likely anticipated any black man having to give if he ever got this close to the presidency.  

The challenge for Barack, thanks to the politics of our times, is that it has necessarily become a far more personal speech.  Attacking a man because of what his pastor says from the pulpit is uniquely our generation's "contribution" to the discourse of politics in America.  It is likely that his statements on his pastor will overshadow the rest of the speech in the short term.  While a minefield awaits here, I'm sure Barack will figure out a way to express love for his pastor, while at the same time representing a new generation of Americans who know that his pastor's vitriol has lost its value in our discourse save only for its ability to inflame.  

We'll only know the real value of tomorrow's speech many years from now, when the words quoted from that speech are not those about his pastor, but about our country.  The pastor will be the necessary intro into this speech for our grandchildren's history class, but the words that matter won't be about him at all. 

They will be about us.