“There is nothing false about hope,” Charles Ogletree, J.D., said at the 2011 Martin Luther King Jr. lecture sponsored by the Washington University School of Medicine on Monday.
Ogletree was paraphrasing comments made on the campaign trail by Barack Obama, his former student at Harvard Law School. Ogletree is a long-time intimate of the Obamas – he also taught law to the future first lady, when she was Michelle Robinson – and currently serves as a special counsel to the president.
The theme of his lecture was “From Campaigning to Governing: New Challenges Facing President Barack Obama.” Ogletree seized the moment to remind the audience of Obama’s accomplishments, despite inheriting two wars and an economy that was in steep descent.
Merely in legislation passed in December 2010 during the lame-duck session of Congress, Ogletree pointed out, Obama extended middle-class tax cuts and passed a repeal of the ban on gays serving openly in the military and a new Strategic Arms Reduction treaty.
“His ratings have gone up,” Ogletree said.
Ogletree – the Jesse Climenko Professor of Law at Harvard University and founder and executive director of the Charles Hamilton Institute for Race and Justice – brought the largest gathering in recent years to the annual MLK lecture. The series is organized by Will Ross, M.D., associate dean of diversity and associate professor at Washington University School of Medicine.
Ogletree told the sizeable audience that citizens who support the president should speak up as he works on job creation, improving the economy and other challenges that lay ahead in the last two years of his first term – and his reelection campaign next year.
“We hear a lot from people who are dissatisfied with certain aspects of government. We don’t hear a lot from people who are happy that government is doing something,” Ogletree said.
“Don’t think that you don’t have a voice. We have substantial populations of African Americans, Latinos. We need to hear from everybody, because the people who make the loudest noise aren’t always giving the right point of view.”
He said we as a people don’t do enough to teach young people about the challenges we face and it is our responsibility to teach young people what Barack Obama has accomplished. He encouraged the audience tell children they are loved and to reinforce that they too can achieve.
“You have to reinforce in their mind that people like Dr. King died for the right for them to be what they can be,” Ogletree said.
Ogletree said both Barack and Michelle Obama, whom he taught at different times – were brilliant and remarkable students.
“They both come from families that lifted them up to do something – didn’t give them a silver spoon,” Ogletree said.
In terms of the immediate political challenges for Obama, Ogletree said the president’s political adversaries’ effort to repeal his health care reform is merely wasted symbolic energy.
“There is no way in heaven that the president would sign that health care repeal – he’s not going to do that,” Ogletree said.
“That’s the one thing that he has the power to do – say, ‘No, folks, I’m not going to take this away from the people.'”
Obama made this clear in a statement released Tuesday.
“Because of the Affordable Care Act, Americans no longer have to live in fear that insurance companies will drop or cap their coverage if they get sick, or that they’ll face double-digit premium increases with no accountability or recourse,” Obama said in the statement.
“Small businesses across the country can take advantage of a new health care tax credit to offer coverage to their employees, and children suffering from an illness or pre-existing condition can no longer be denied coverage. Parents now can add their adult children up to age 26 to their health plans, and all Americans on new plans can access preventive care to keep them healthy with no additional out of pocket costs.”
Ogletree said one of Obama’s great gifts is his skill of being inclusive – trying to serve everybody. And it was Martin Luther King Jr. who said, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
