Reading Materials for Unit Reading Materials for Unit 99: A More Perfect Union : A More Perfect Union (I) (I) (I) 6223 words 6223 words Obama's Victory Ushers in a New America
By Joe Klein ，Wednesday, Nov. 05, 2008， 1334 words ，From TIME
Q: 1. According to Para. One, what does Republicans’ dismay with the right-wing religious drift of the state Republican Party suggest? (the coming of Obama era)
2.Who is Nate Hundt? (community organizer) How did Nate Hundt become a part of the Algona
community?
英语日记80字
3. Who are community organizers?
4. What does “the larger political philosophy” Obama mentions refer to?
5. According to the author, why did John McCain lo and why did Obama win the election?
6. What’s the significant of Obama’s election?
Eleven months ago, I attended a John Edwards speech in the little town of Algona , Iowa. It was a Sun
day afternoon, and Edwards had drawn a large crowd of mostly uncommitted （未做承诺的） voters to a local factory that made wind-turbine （风力涡轮机）components (元件). Two things soon became apparent as I interviewed a dozen or so Algonans before the speech. The first was that there were a fair number of Republicans prent, a phenomenon I was beginning to notice all over Iowa. They were not yet committed to voting Democratic, but they mentioned their disappointment in George W. Bush, their frustration with the war in Iraq and their dismay with the right-wing religious drift of the state Republican Party. The last time I'd en so many crossovers was in 1980, when Democrats — angry at Jimmy Carter and their party's leftward drift — made their prence felt at Republican meetings, heralding （预示） the ont （beginning ）of the Reagan era .
The other phenomenon wa s a person . I was talking to a local businessman named Bill Farnham, who wasn't yet sure whom he was voting for, "but I'm really impresd with the organizer Obama nt out here. His name is Nate Hundt , and he's really become part of the community." As he spoke, veral other Algonans gathered around and began recounting tales of the young organizer who had come straight to Algona after graduating from Yale six months earlier. （2）Hundt had opened a campaign headquarters in the H&R Block office downtown, joined a local environmental group, shown up for the high school football games. He was a constant prence at civic events. Eventually,
Hundt became so much a part of the community that the town leaders asked him to stay on after the caucus and run for city council. But Hundt had other work to do. The Obama campaign nt him to Colorado, Ohio and North Carolina during the long primary ason, then back to Colorado Springs for the general election. "I'm still in touch with my friends from Algona," Hundt said. "In fact, a few of them have come out here to help canvass(游说). But I'm not unique. There are a lot of us who had similar experiences."
Indeed, there are — an army of them, untold thousands of young organizers operating out of more than 700 offices nationwide. And they have delivered a message to Rudy Giuliani, who sneered during the Republican National Convention that he didn't even know "what a (3) community
organizer is." This is who they are: they are the people who won this election. They were the heart and soul and backbone of Barack Obama's victory.They are destined to emerge as the next significant generation of American political operatives— similar to the antiwar and antigregation baby boomers who dominated the Democratic Party after cutting their teeth on the Bobby Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy campaigns of 1968, similar to the pro-life, antitax Reaganauts who dominated the Republican Party and American politics from the election of 1980 ... until now. They are a preview of the style and substance of the Obama Administration.
Obama's decision to expend so much effort on a field organization was quietly revolutionary and a perfect fit for（4）the larger political philosophy that he described when I spoke with him a few weeks ago. Obama insisted that while creating a new energy economy was his No. 1 priority, "we can't divorce the energy issue from what I believe has to be the dominant political theme underlying everything — the economy, health care, you name it. And that is restorin g(恢复) a n that we're growing the economy from the bottom up and not the top down. That's the overarching（首要的邻邦
首要的））philosophical change that we've got to have."
That was the substantive(实质上的)heart of his campaign and of this election. It was a stark （complete）difference between the candidates. Unlike many elections I've covered where the stakes (奖金)were small and the differences between the candidates were minor, this was a big election, with big differences between the candidates. It was a referendum（公民投票）on the Reagan era. Try as he might to dissociate himlf from the Bush Administration, John McCain remained a classic Reaganite. He believed in the unilateral exerci of American power overas, with an emphasis on military might rather than diplomacy. He believed in trickle-down, supply-side, deregulatory economics: his tax plan benefited corporations and the wealthy, in the hopes that with fewer shackles, they would create more jobs. Obama was quite the opposite. Unlike Bill Clinton, who
purpo was to humanize Reaganism but not really challenge it, Obama offered a full-throated rebuttal to Clinton's notion that "the era of Big Government is over." He was a liberal, as charged. But the public was ready, after a 30-year conrvative pendulum swing（钟摆摆动
钟摆摆动））, for activist government.
Although McCain gave a gracious concession speech, the old fighter pilot understood that his argument was a lor — perhaps he even understood that the Reagan revolution had run its cour（按常规发展）— and so his strategy was to make a big election small. He attacked Obama relentlessly, often foolishly, sometimes scurrilously（rudely）. The public didn't buy it. This was never more apparent than during the three presidential debates, which probably clinched the election for Obama. McCain was starting from a disadvantage. （5）He had developed a bad ca of Washingtonitis; he spoke Senate(参议员风格), a language of process and tactics that sometimes approached incoherence. In 2000, McCain spoke with a bracing clarity. "The reason why we don't have a patients' bill of rights," he would say, "is becau the Republican Party is in the pocket of the insurance industry and the Democrats are in the pocket of the trial lawyers." In the 2008 debates, he skittered （skip）from attack to attack, lacking the vision and patience to explain what he would actually do as President. Obama's best moments were when he patiently explained w
hat he would do about
the economy, health care, education. Tho who say Obama won becau of the financial crisis are telling only half the story. He won becau he reacted to the crisis in a measured, mature wa y . He won becau in the cond debate, he explained to a gentleman named Oliver Clark, in terms that anyone could understand, the financial collap and the need for a federal bailout (紧急救助). But this election was about much more than issues.（6） It was the ratification of an esntial change in the nature of the countr y. I've en two others in my lifetime. The election of John Kennedy ratified the new America that had emerged from war and depression — a place where more people owned homes and went to college, a place where young people had the affluence to be idealistic or to rebel, a place that was safe enough to get a little crazy, a xier country. Ronald Reagan's election was a rebellion against that — an announcement that toughness had replaced idealism overas, that individual economic freedom had replaced common economic purpo at home. It was an act of nostalgia(怀旧), harking back to the "real" America — white, homogeneous （同种的）, small-town — that the McCain campaign unsuccessfully tried to appeal to.
（6）Obama's victory creates the prospect of a new "real" America. We can't possibly know its contours （外形，轮廓）yet, although I suspect the headline is that it is no longer homogeneous. It i
s no longer a "white" country, even though whites remain the majority. It is a place where the primacy of racial identity — and this includes the old, Jes Jackson version of black racial identity — has been replaced by the celebration of pluralism, of cross-racial synergy （协同协同））. After eight years of misgovernance, it has lost some of its global swagger （大摇大摆） ... but also some of its arrogance. It may no longer be as dominant, economically or diplomatically, as it once was. But it is younger, more optimistic, less cynical. It is a country that retains its ability to startle the world — and in a good way, with our freedom. It is a place, finally, where the content of our President's character is more important than the color of his skin.eing
groovyWhat Obama's Election Really Means to B What Obama's Election Really Means to Black America lack America lack America
美国留学需要的条件By Steven Gray / Chicago, Thursday, Nov. 06, 2008, 1057 words
Q ：1. What’s the significance of Obama’s election?
2. Did many people begin to support Obama from the very beginning? Why?
3. Why Michael Johnson was allowed to vote for the first time?
4.Why did Barbara Gray vote for Obama?
Much of black America is still struggling to grasp the full meaning of Barack Obama's election to the presidency. The overall mood is awash with （full of ） pride but shaded （阴影）with angst(anxiety) and the larger question: Now what?
On Wednesday, the Harvard University scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr . appeared on Oprah Winfrey's celebratory post-election special. After learning the news, Gates says, "we jumped up, we wept, we hooped(hold together) and hollered （yell or shout ）." It is hard to overestimate the historical significance of the election of the first black U.S. President. For many blacks, and certainly for much of the country and world, (1) Obama's victory is an extraordinary step toward the redemption (赎
回)of America's original 400-year-old sin.It is astonishing not least（尤其是）for its quickness, coming just 145 years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation effectively ending slavery and four decades after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. And it is even more astonishing for its decisiveness — Obama carried（赢得…支持）Virginia, once the home of the Confederacy, a place who laws just five decades ago would have made the interracial union of his parents illegal.
"Just a little more than 10 years ago," Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin told TIME this week, "it was inconceivable to any of us that we would e an African American win a national party's ticket and then compete effectively. It's mind-boggling(吃惊)," she continued, "how much this means about the opportunities available to all people — Asians, Latinos and other people who've historically been locked out of the system.")
全民情敌>visibility
What is perhaps most surprising about (2)many blacks' support of Obama is that it was not immediate or easy.Many African Americans were initially skeptical about Obama's candidacy, partly becau they regarded him as somehow inauthentically black due to his upbringing in Hawaii and Indonesia, as well as his last name, which even the President-elect has described as "funny sounding."
确认英文Black support of Obama soared after he won last winter's Iowa caucus. But there were moments in this campaign when Obama was forced to manage the issue of race deftly(skillfully) and explain the unexplainable to a largely white electorate(全体选民). Consider the ca of his former pastor(牧师), the Rev.（reverent）Jeremiah Wright Jr. Obama joined Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago in the 1980s, when Obama was an obscure community organizer. Trinity gave Obama an entrée（entrance）to the city's thriving black middle class, and Obama came to view Wright in partic
ular as a mentor. Yet earlier this year, Obama was compelled for political reasons to leave the church. The public criticism stemmed from controversial comments about the U.S. by Wright that proved too harsh to the ears of outsiders, many who are not aware of the nuances （difference）of the black religious-cultural experience, or of the fact that black churches have traditionally been a place for coping with the legacy of racism in this country. When Obama left Trinity, he suggested that the scrutiny(clo examination)he faced becau of Wright's rmons would follow him to whatever church he and his family cho to attend as the First Family. That will be especially true if the Obamas choo another traditional black church, where the rhetoric on matters of social policy and everyday life — not just on racism — may sound radical to much of the country.
cancel什么意思
Obama's candidacy inspired scores of blacks like Michael Johnson, 33, to vote for the first time. At about noon on Nov. 4, Johnson showed up at his Gary, Ind., polling station to cast his vote. But he was turned away（refud）.(3)The reason: his name appeared on a list of people who had already cast abntee votes. Johnson left the station dismayed. He spent the next five hours driving across Lake County, Ind., sorting out the mess with election authorities in Crown Point, the county's at, before eventually returning to the Gary polling station. He says the polling station's managers
applauded when they saw him. "They didn't think I was coming back," the hotel dishwasher said late
Tuesday. "But this election was just too important for me to miss."
Meanwhile,(4) Barbara Gray, 65, a retiree who is also from Gary, said she voted for Obama partly becau she hoped he would take interest in improving conditions in urban areas — like Obama's adopted hometown neighborhood, Hyde Park, a leafy Chicago enclave surrounded by some of the city's bleakest communities. She said Obama may be the first President with a firsthand understanding of life in neighborhoods like hers. Gray said she wants the basics: cracked sidewalks repaved, enough funding so that largely black and Latino urban public schools can compete with the predominately white schools in affluent suburbs. "Just look around," she said on Election Day, pointing to a long row of blighted(destroyed) buildings along one of Gary's main boulevards, Broadway Street. "There's 101 things that need to be done."
In an interview with TIME this week, the Rev. Jes Jackson said that Obama's election "shows that there's nothing el we can't be. There's no university we can't be riously considered to lead. There's no bank we can't be considered in if we have the right credentials(资格)."
There's no doubting that Obama's candidacy reprents the shattering of many of the racial barriers that have long been entrenched in America. But it is also worth tempering（moderate减轻，节制）th
o expectations. Standing in the crisp breeze along Chicago's Michigan Avenue, on the night of Obama's election, Freddie Arnett, a 51-year-old maintenance supervisor, expresd hope that Obama would show concern for urban affairs. But Arnett acknowledged, "I know it's going to take time."
Shortly after Obama's election, a throng of people stood outside the Chicago headquarters of two of the country's leading chronicles（编年史
编年史））of black life, Jet and Ebony magazines, and beamed at a row of covers featuring Barack and Michelle Obama.
"Our country is showing its forward evolution, that the color of one's skin cannot inhibit one's ability, and that's worthy of celebration," said Corey Booker, mayor of Newark, N.J.
Promid Land (Book Review)
footprint
By KEVIN BOYLE March 21, 2010, from The New York Times
THE MAKING OF AFRICAN AMERICA: The Four Great Migrations (By Ira Berlin, 304 pp.) Questions: 1. When and why did the author’s parents ll their hou? 2. What is Berlin’s CONC
EPT of the entire African-American experience? 3. What are African-American’s four massive migrations? 4. What is the similarity of the four migrations? 5. Why most freedmen didn’t move far from where they’d been enslaved? 6.
