And as thankful as we are for a public discussion of race, we are also grateful to him for injecting nuanced, complicated ideas into the public debate. He spoke to the country like we were grownups. And long after the swooning and accolades for his performance die down, we hope the bar he's raised on grownup discourse will stay high.

The "mistakes were made" denials that have littered the political landscape for the past generation, from "I am not a crook" to "I did not have sex with that woman," have had a corrupting impact on our souls. They tell us that we don't have to own up to our own lives, and as long as we can twist and spin the truth, maybe we can get away with anything.

Obama "manned up." He didn't throw pastor Jeremiah Wright under the bus. He took Wright out of the category of political surrogate, those proxies who have been fighting so many battles lately.

John McCain threw his surrogate Bill Cunningham off the stage, Hillary Clinton's campaign let the door hit Geraldine Farraro on her way out after her racist gaffe, and even the Obama campaign saw Samantha Power become history after calling Hillary a monster. But on Tuesday, Obama recognized Wright's separateness and embraced him at the same time, saying, "I could no more disown him than my own grandmother."

Barack Obama embraced Wright despite his flaws, despite their disagreements.

That could be why the speech resonated with so many - all of us with a family have people in our lives who we must embrace, no matter how hard that may be.

We know that a family demands love, forgiveness and acceptance in the face of flaws - and serious disagreements don't necessarily threaten the whole. That's something we think this country is longing for.

We aren't children who want to watch cartoonish exaggerations of right and wrong, good and bad, black and white. We're grownups, facing a frightening future. Pretending that people must be above mistakes, above imperfections, makes that future even more difficult. *