President Obama delivered his long awaited speech in Cairo, Egypt early this morning, calling for a "new beginning" to relations between America and the Muslim world and seeking to emphasize the common ground and shared values between the two.
• Areas of Agreement: The president has built his political and policy successes on the idea that even among those who disagree most vehemently, there is a kernel of common ground that can be found and built upon. Obama has used this approach to effectively address major hot-button issues like race and abortion stateside, and put it to use again this morning by working to convince the Muslim world that its own values are not so different from those of America. Early in the address, Obama noted that "all of us share common aspirations" including the desire to "live in peace and prosperity" and to "love our families, our communities and our God." He added: "These things we share. This is the hope of all humanity." Obama's entire political career -- from his time in the legislature to his short stint in the Senate and then the 2008 campaign -- is defined by this "more light, less heat" approach. It's worked for him so far but convincing the Muslim world to trust America and vice versa is a much thornier task than even turning down the volume on the abortion debate.
• Laying Down a Marker: At 6,100 total words and 55 minutes long, this was a speech meant for history not for the moment. Put another way, Obama's speech today was meant to lay out his broad philosophy about the future of American-Islam relations -- from dealing with terrorists, to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the possibility of a nuclear Iran -- rather than offer a series of specific proposals about how to create a better and deeper understanding between the two sides. It's an approach Obama has used before on domestic issues: he has laid out the same sort of non-specific vision for the economy and national security in lengthy speeches on each subject in recent months. Perhaps seeking to pre-but his critics, who have latched on to the idea that Obama gives good speech but his actual policies are either vague or wrongheaded, the president said today that: "Recognizing our common humanity is only the beginning of our task. Words alone cannot meet the needs of our people." The goal of this speech -- and the others like it Obama has given -- is to set a general course on the direction of relations between America and the Muslim world without offering specific instructions on how to get from point A to point B. Obama believes that on the most difficult of issues -- foreign and domestic -- that rolling out specifics on the front end gets in the way of true compromise and forward movement. That approach will be tested domestically on health care this fall.
• A Confident President: Given the level of mistrust toward Islamic countries within the United States, delivering a speech in Cairo in which the president said he saw it as his "responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear" shows the level of confidence he has in his ability to persuade. It's almost impossible to imagine a president -- even Obama -- giving this sort of speech within a year (or so) of running for reelection, not because the content was that controversial (it wasn't) but rather because it gives political enemies lots and lots to shoot at on a very controversial subject. But, riding high in job approval ratings, trusted by broad swaths of the American public and three and a half years from his 2012 re-election race, Obama felt confident enough in his standing to deliver a speech that he knows will be picked apart and analyzed by political friends and foes for years to come.
• Breaking from the Past: Knowing how unpopular former president George W. Bush's approach to foreign policy was in the Muslim world, Obama sought to make clear that his administration was taking firm steps to offer a clean break from the ways things had been done. While calling the terrorists attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 an "enormous trauma" for the United States, Obama added that the "fear" and "anger" it provoked "led us to act contrary to our traditions and our ideals." Obama also referred to the war in Iraq as a "war of choice" (contrasting it with the conflict in Afghanistan) and added that the Iraq situation should serve as reminder to American of the "need to use diplomacy" and "build international consensus" to solve conflicts. The message was clear: I am not George Bush and it is a new day in how America views its roll in the world.
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