Impulse

As thou­sands hud­dled in win­ter coats & hats in D.C. yes­ter­day morn­ing, I shiv­ered in lay­ers of blan­kets in my liv­ing room (no, it wasn’t an act of sol­i­dar­ity – my heat’s been out for a week), glued to the TV to watch Senator Obama become President Obama.  It was a great moment that I’d been look­ing for­ward to for a long time – espe­cially the inau­gural address.  I’ve long been a fan of great ora­tory and had high hopes for this speech from an excel­lent ora­tor on a momen­tous, long awaited day. 

I was a lit­tle dis­ap­pointed.  It was a scat­ter­shot speech.  He was solid on each of the myr­iad points he made, but there was no over­all mes­sage, no guid­ing prin­ci­ple that drove every­thing else.  It was an oppor­tu­nity lost.  I think William Safire nailed it on NYTimes:

‘

Our 44th president’s Inaugural Address was solid, respectable, uplift­ing, suit­ably short, superbly deliv­ered, but — in light of the tow­er­ing expec­ta­tions whipped up that his speech might belong in the com­pany of those by Lincoln, F.D.R. and Kennedy — fell short of the antic­i­pated immortality.

[…]

A good speech has to have a mem­o­rable theme, stated early and reprised at the end. It did not emerge in this address.

To mobi­lize peo­ple to col­lec­tive action, you have to have com­mu­ni­cate a sin­gle guid­ing prin­ci­ple.  Taxation with­out rep­re­sen­ta­tion; “Free at last”; man on the moon by the end of the decade – that sort of thing.  This not only gives peo­ple a frame­work for under­stand­ing your pol­icy, but guides their own deci­sions.  It gets indi­vid­u­als excited because they under­stand how they can change things.  If any­thing, Obama’s cam­paign was about change and grass-roots action.  Having a guid­ing prin­ci­ple in the speech would have been a per­fect method for launch­ing grass-roots change in sup­port of his policy.

Shisol was glad that “there was no swing­ing for the rhetor­i­cal fences”.  I agree.  You win more base­ball games by con­sis­tently hit­ting solid base hits than gam­bling on home runs.  Happily, Obama’s team demon­strates a lack of self-grandeur.  Still, you don’t have to have Lincoln-worthy rhetoric to ignite a move­ment. You just have to make a clear point.  If Obama had done that, I would’ve felt much, much more inspired by his speech, mak­ing me for­get my unfair expec­ta­tions of immor­tal ora­tory (my expec­ta­tions are my mistake). 

All that said, I still can’t say the phrase “President Barack Obama” with­out a big ole sat­is­fied grin spread­ing over my face.

Related posts:

1. Yes we can Obama video
2. Vote Obama
3. Change