Kerry's Touch Of The Poet

By David Paul Kuhn,
CBSNews.com Chief Political Writer

"Let it be the dream it used to be," the presumed Democratic presidential nominee said, "for those whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain must bring back our mighty dream again."

In his own words, Kerry added: "In 2004, we have to bring back our mighty dream again. We have to make America all that it can become."

Kerry seems to have found his slogan. He first quoted Hughes last month in Topeka, Kansas, on the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's historic Brown v. Board of Education ruling. Since then, he's used the lines in stump speech after stump speech, usually sticking to the poem's title, though at times adding the words, "Let it be the dream it used to be."

For the African American poet Hughes, the dream of America never was more than that, a dream. Written in 1938, "Let America Be America Again" is one of Hughes most famous and most embittered poems.

"It was an anthem that Hughes wrote for the Depression, when he felt very much abused for various reasons, not least of which was the economic poverty plaguing the country, but also racism," explained Arnold Rampersad, author of the definitive two-volume biography, "The Life of Langston Hughes."

"I think it was out of that sense of personal and national suffering that he wrote that poem," said Rampersad, the Cognizant Dean for the Humanities at Stanford University. "It's not for me say whether it's appropriate today."

Kerry, apparently, thinks it is appropriate. And to unseat an incumbent president, he will have to convince enough voters that America today is not the America they want.

There is no poll statistic political campaigns watch more closely than whether or not the nation is going in the right direction. And a clear majority of voters continue to say the country has gone seriously off track.

In the latest CBS News/New York Times poll, fully 57 percent of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. President Bush's campaign knows that number must diminish for Mr. Bush to earn four more years in office.

But Kerry also cannot appear to be a pessimist. So he will likely refrain from the more bitter lines of Hughes' poem, which express the poet's resentment at an American dream he saw as more far more ideal than attainable. In Hughes' America, of course, it was especially unattainable for African Americans.

"In the darkest days of the Civil Rights Movement, one would have seen the connection [between Hughes' words and the reality of American life] very clearly," Rampersad said. "Whether it is appropriate right now depends on one view of what is going on around the world. It would depend on one's sense of whether the American government is serving the American people to the appropriate extent at this time."

The poem itself reads as a moral call to arms, a gut check for Americans. It is both a condemnation of the country and an affirmation of ideals for which it stands.

Hughes felt disenfranchised from his country, a theme that runs through his poetry. Considered one of the greatest American poets, Hughes achieved fame at the height of the 1920s Harlem Renaissance for his compelling writing on black America, both its pain and its perseverance.

In the poem, he declares himself the "poor white," "the Negro," the "red man driven from the land" and "the immigrant clutching" to hope. Near the poem's end, Hughes writes bitterly, "America never was America to me." But he closes on an optimistic note: "And yet I swear this oath – America will be!"

For Rampersad, the themes are timeless. "America was founded on certain ideals – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, there's a constitution and so on," he said. "The question always is: 'Is the American government, and to some extent the American people who are the haves, are they living up to the ideals?'"

Whether Kerry can benefit in this campaign from a theme that describes a country lost unto itself depends on the state of the nation come October. Yet for Americans to come to a conclusion, it may have more to do with events in Iraq than the subtle themes of Kerry's campaign.

"Let America Be America Again." Well, Hughes' point is that it never was. It's up to presidential candidates to convince voters that they are the best person to bring the nation closer to that ideal.

"The answer always will be," says Rampersad, that those in power "live up to those ideals only partially."