[Ben Smith] February 16, 2008 Read More: Barack Obama
NYT's Keller compares Obama and Mandela
The executive editor of The New York Times, Bill Keller, sees "unmistakable" similarities between the campaigns of Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela, he said in a podcast interview on the paper's website.
The interview, done for the New York Times Book Review, is on the subject of Keller's young adult biography of Nelson Mandela, whom he covered. Asked about Obama, Keller calls him "fascinating."
Keller said Obama and Mandela share a rhetorical style, not always riveting, but always "appealing to the higher sense of purpose and history."
And he said both "somehow rose above race while still clearly being black."
I transcribed the brief portion of the interview, pointed out to me by a reader, which you can listen to here (.mp3).
> You want to be careful about drawing historical parallels between
> societies that are so different, but there are a couple of
> similarities that, if you watch what happened South Africa, that
> are unmistakable in the Obama campaign.
>
> One is the inspirational quality of it. Mandela, like Obama,
> although he wasn’t always the most riveting public speaker, was the
> kind of speaker who didn’t dwell on the details of his ten-point
> program, but went for emotional lift. He was appealing to the
> higher sense of purpose and history in his public appearances, as
> Obama does.
>
> And the other thing is that both of them, in a way, transcended
> race — at least, to a degree transcended race. Colin Powell used to
> use this line when people used to try to draw him into
> conversations abot race and what it was like to be the first black
> secretary of state, the first black this, the first black that, and
> he would say, "I ain’t that black."
>
> And what I think what he meant by that was not just that he was
> light-skinned, but that he didn’t grow up as preoccupied by race as
> a lot of other African-Ameircans who rose to prominence.
>
> And Something of the same thing can be said about either Mandela or
> Obama — that they somehow rose above race while still clearly being
> black.