MSNBC's Video of Barack Obama's Speech 'A More Pefect Union' & Some Reviews From Across The Board

MSNBC has also posted Barack Obama's Speech 'A More Perfect Union'. I am posting it because it is a cleaner version in it's resolution, pixels, graphics and clarity than the YouTube version.

Here are some reviews of Obama's Speech that I found on the net this morning:

The New York Times' editorial ("Mr. Obama's Profile In Courage"):
Inaugural addresses by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt come to mind, as does John F. Kennedy's 1960 speech on religion, with its enduring vision of the separation between church and state. Senator Barack Obama, who has not faced such tests of character this year, faced one on Tuesday. It is hard to imagine how he could have handled it better.

Atlantic.com, James Fallows:
It was a moment that Obama made great through the seriousness, intelligence, eloquence, and courage of what he said. I don't recall another speech about race with as little pandering or posturing or shying from awkward points, and as much honest attempt to explain and connect, as this one.

Charles Kaiser, Radar:
He did it. No other presidential candidate in the last forty years has managed to speak so much truth so eloquently at such a crucial juncture in his campaign as Barack Obama did today. And he did it by speaking about race, the most persistent source of hatred among us since America began.
It turns out that a candidate for president with a white mother and a black father has a capacity that no one else has ever had before: he can articulate an equal understanding of black racism and white racism --and that makes it possible for him to condemn both of them with equal passion.

Andrew Sullivan Atlantic.com:
But I do want to say that this searing, nuanced, gut-wrenching, loyal, and deeply, deeply Christian speech is the most honest speech on race in America in my adult lifetime. It is a speech we have all been waiting for for a generation. Its ability to embrace both the legitimate fears and resentments of whites and the understandable anger and dashed hopes of many blacks was, in my view, unique in recent American history.

Kate Sheppard, The American Prospect:
Obama's much-anticipated speech on race today hit the appropriate tone not just for addressing the Jeremiah Wright flap, but for framing the relevance of his candidacy in general. It was best in the way it framed the discomfort and resentment in the discussion of race in America that has lead to a "racial stalemate" for so many years, and made race "a part of our union that we have not yet made perfect."

Thomas Mann, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution:
An extraordinary speech - not because of any rhetorical flourishes, but because it was honest, frank, measured in tone, inclusive and hopeful. … Indeed, I would say he appeared wise beyond his years and genuinely presidential.

Michael Munger, Political Science Professor, Duke University:
Obama's speech was brave. He is trying to take an actual position, rather than just distance himself from the Rev. Wright, who is clearly a political liability. But I think he is being naive. … A black candidate named Barack Hussein Obama can't have questions about his patriotism, and commitment to America, not if he is going to beat a genuine war hero. I think Obama is unelectable. He had to distance himself far from Wright. Instead, he was brave.

Suzanne M. Gold, Department of Political Science, The Pennsylvania State University:
While it may convince some, there will inevitably be people out there who will not be able to disentangle Obama's words from Rev. Wright's. The Internet is a powerful thing, and between Rev. Wright's words, the endorsement of Louis Farrakhan, and the picture of Obama in "Muslim-looking" apparel, there will be people all over the country, not just in Pennsylvania, that will see and hear those few things and run with them. No damage control can change those people's minds.