Help others achieve the American dream, Obama urges
The call for service is part of a flag-draped week focused on God, country, veterans and freedom. They are larger-than-life themes, all prominent in the successful campaigns of President Bush and aimed at introducing Obama to Americans who know little about the presumed Democratic nominee — or who may be skeptical based on what they've heard.
John McCain, the Republican nominee-in-waiting, was in Colombia Wednesday where he hailed the economic benefits of free trade, raising the possibility of an eventual hemisphericwide agreement even though a weak economy at home has soured many U.S. voters on trade agreements.
McCain also toured Colombia's largest port by speedboat to review the country's U.S.-backed drug interdiction programs, a day after he praised President Alvaro Uribe for Colombia's anti-drug efforts but pressed him to improve the government's record on human rights.
Before a boisterous University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS) crowd. Obama said the quiet following Friday's Independence Day celebrations would be a good time to consider how to contribute "to our most pressing national challenges," whether in the military, overseas or just next door.
Obama talked in almost achingly intimate terms about the impact service had on him, as a boy who "spent much of my childhood adrift" and often had little idea "who I was or where I was going" because of his father's absence. But early in college, he said, values like hard work and empathy instilled by his mother and grandparents resurfaced "after a long hibernation." He eventually found himself working as a community organizer in a devastated South Side Chicago neighborhood and said he was transformed.
Obama's call echoed Bush's "love a neighbor like you'd like to be loved yourself," an enduring staple of the president's political speeches of the last eight years. But Obama's campaign said the focus on service was meant not to recall Bush but to reach back to President John F. Kennedy's generation-captivating "ask not what your country can do for you" inaugural address or President Clinton's creation of AmeriCorps.
To Obama, the problem is not that Americans are not willing to serve. It's that they have neither been asked aggressively enough nor given enough opportunities. In a clear slap to Bush, he decried that Americans eager to pitch in after the 2001 attacks were merely "asked to shop."
Recent comments
Obama is calling for volunteer service because with the new taxes...
Joe W | July 3, 2008 at 7:45 a.m.
You got that right also - The truth is - What Obamaism has ment,...
Re: Bob G | July 3, 2008 at 7:33 a.m.
What Obama is talking about is leave the illegal mexicans alone and...
Bob G | July 3, 2008 at 6:37 a.m.
