Published: March 15, 2008 10:53 pm         

Presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama brings message, platform to Indiana

PLAINFIELD — Near the end of a line of people that stretched around the back of Plainfield High School on Saturday morning, 21-year-old Jonathan Ogilvie, a student at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, waited to find out if he would get in to see Sen. Barack Obama.

Ogilvie is the vice president of the College Democrats at Rose, he said. Although he was unable to snatch up one of the free tickets during the brief interval that they were available online Thursday, Ogilvie made the trip anyway, in case an opportunity presented itself.

Several dozen ticketless hopefuls had the same idea, and their persistence paid off. After the line died down around noon, a number of those who did not have tickets were granted access to the event. Ogilvie was one of them.

Obama, whose campaign announced Thursday it would be coming for a Town Hall Meeting on Saturday at the high school gymnasium, spoke to a crowd of nearly 3,000 people, most of whom came well in advance of the scheduled 2:20 p.m. speech.

Ogilvie said he likes Obama because the presidential candidate offers change — and hope.

“After eight years of what we’ve had,” Ogilvie said, “we need something different.”

Ogilvie, who is originally from Massachusetts, said the fact that Indiana may become a battleground in the Democratic primary is “something good for everyone around, where they usually don’t get that opportunity.”

Kathy Ogle, 51, who is the wife of Avon Community School Superintendent Tim Ogle, introduced Obama to the crowd, saying, “This presidential election, to me, is about leadership … we need our next president to be the one who unites and inspires us.”

As Obama entered the gymnasium, audience members rose to their feet, applauding enthusiastically. Hundreds were seated in chairs on the floor. The rest filled the bleachers on one side of the gym.

After touching on many of his common election issues and themes, Obama addressed the recent controversy raised by Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.

Obama, referring to the speech given by Bobby Kennedy in Indianapolis the night Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, said, “At that moment of anguish, [Kennedy] said we’ve got a choice — we’ve got a choice in taking the rage and bitterness and disappointment and letting it fester and divide us further so that we no longer see each other as Americans, we see each other as separate and apart and at odds with each other, or we could take a different path that says we have different stories but we have common dreams and common hopes.”

The presidential candidate went on, “Most recently, you heard some statements from my former pastor that were incendiary and that I completely reject, although I knew him — and know him — as somebody in my church who talked to me about Jesus and family and friendships.”

However, Obama added, “If all I knew was those statements I saw on television, I’d be shocked. And it reminds me that we’ve got a tragic history when it comes to race in this country. We’ve got a lot of pent-up anger and bitterness and misunderstanding, but what I continue to believe in is this country wants to move beyond those kind of things. This country wants something different.

“I will not allow us to lose this moment … we cannot forget about our past and not ignore the very real forces of racial inequality and gender inequality and the other things that divide us, I don’t want us to forget them. We need to acknowledge them and lift them up and when people say things like my former pastor said, you have to speak up forcefully against them.”

Obama answered questions from the crowd touching on everything from violence against women, to his plans for No Child Left Behind, and how he intends to take care of problems within the Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare systems.

An Indianapolis man asked Obama about Indiana’s role in alternative energy sources, specifically corn-based ethanol.

Obama answered, “We spend a billion dollars a day sending money to foreign nations because of our addiction to foreign oil. Oil prices are at the highest level in history, and they’re not going down anytime soon.

“China and India need fuel for growth — there are a million Chinese who don’t have a car who want a car,” he said.

After saying that alternative fuels and energy sources will be the necessary next step for breaking America’s dependence on foreign oil, Obama said, “Corn-based ethanol is not optimal. I’ve been a big supporter of corn-based ethanol. I come from a corn state — Illinois — and it’s a good transitional technology, but the truth is, it is not as efficient as what the Brazilians are doing with sugar cane.”

Obama continued, saying that more money needs to be devoted to researching and developing additional forms of alternative energy.

“And the way we’re going to pay for it … is we’re going to cap the emission of greenhouse gases that are causing global warming … that means that we are charging polluters for the carbon they’re sending into the atmosphere … we take billions of dollars from those charges and we reinvest them in solar and wind and biodiesel and clean coal technology,” he said.

Obama ended his comments by saying that though he is not a perfect man and will not be a perfect president, “I can promise you this … I will wake up every single day thinking about making your lives a little bit better.”

Deb Kelly can be reached at (812) 231-4254 or at deb.kelly@tribstar.com.