This morning Bill Richardson ended his Hamlet-like agony over whom to endorse and jumped eagerly behind Barack Obama. Why now, after weeks of mud-slinging and beard-growing? For Richardson, as for me, Obama's speech in Philadelphia on Tuesday sealed the deal. Richardson picked up on what the press has been willfully ignoring: in that speech from the National Constitution Center Obama provided a starting point for racial healing. And for so much else.

On Tuesday, Obama, positioned about six blocks due east of me, talked about the promise of America, predictably, but from the start acknowledged the darker side of American race relations in an unexpected and necessary way. The Constitution, he said, “was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery.” We can’t ignore it any longer. Obama conveyed an urgency (presumably, a fierce one) in getting these race issues, so taboo and volatile, front and center right here, right now. He quoted Faulkner in saying, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” That’s why “so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.” The Reverend Wright is a member of that generation. (And no talk of generational divides can avoid the implication that Hillary too was part of that earlier generation, still roiled by firsthand segregation and the like.) Wright’s words — inflammatory and hateful — are understandable precisely because they ring true for many Americans. Of course Obama won’t disown Wright. Who among us would disown those in our families who spew racism. “They’re part of me.” Obama tolerates such sentiment, simply because it is, while disagreeing with the cynicism that sees racism and foreign conquest as endemic to the American system. Obama condemns Wright’s inability to look hopefully upon a future not yet determined by the ills of the past.

Obama also acknowledged white racism and resentment:

In an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told … that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

This acknowledgment, without overt castigation, made in the heart of Philadelphia, should, if the white people in my neighborhood are listening, have a tremendous effect. Their problems — our problems — are not imaginary and not merely hateful.

Given that so many blacks and whites, and Hispanics and Asians, are in the same boat, frustrated about their opportunities and eager to lay blame, Obama says we need to seize this commonality instead of looking for a culprit among our shipmates:

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

Only Obama, I think, could acknowledge that people who succumb to racism, regardless of their race, are not loathsome and necessarily deleterious to the nation. They’re just human. The appropriate response is: Where do we go from here? The difficulties of yesterday and the frustrations of today do not lead irrevocably to the mistakes of tomorrow. It’s up to us.

Ours is not a perfect union, but one “that could be and should be perfected over time.” The narrative Obama provides echoes historian Eric Foner's “The Story of American Freedom,” which says that the promise of America is enshrined in the possibilities of the Constitution, for example the Fourteenth Amendment, which although not immediately fulfilled, lay like a “sleeping giant” to be awakened by future generations. Obama cites this body of sentiment, but departs from previous wisdom by not positing resolution to our manifold ailments in the hopes of the future, but in the reality of his presidency. This transition from hope to reality is vital, in our national development and in Obama himself. Obama — his words and yes his person — provides a starting point for racial healing, which is immediate rather than distant. Significantly, he does so without leaving anyone holding the bag. No one needs to disown anyone else. We’re all in this together.

This was a brave and powerful speech. Rhetorically, structurally, descriptively, and effectively, not a bad start to a presidency.

Bill Richardson saw what I saw in this speech — that when Obama rises up to meet that grand expectation that his campaign has established, then he succeeds in proving that our possibilities for renewal are endless.