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Like most of us, I know
very little about Barack Obama.
He went to Harvard, was the
editor of the Harvard Law Review, served in the Illinois
legislature and then became a senator from the same state. He was born in Hawaii,
has connections with Kenya
and Indonesia,
and, of course, he’s black. And
that’s about it.
There’s also the fact that
his rhetorical skills are flushing Democrats out of the woodwork from Maine
to Mississippi and giving
the nation a taste of high oratory that certainly has been missing since
the days of John F. Kennedy. That for the last eight years we’ve been
subjected to the bumbling blitheration and English-massacring phraseology
of George W. Bush only enhances the impact that Obama is having on anyone
who listens to him.
If for no other reason than
that I would give the guy a shot at the White House.
The linkage of high end
oratory to successful political careers is, after all, not that unusual.
One need only read the funeral oration of Pericles in Thucydides to
understand how he became so successful a leader in Athens.
Or the well-crafted sentences of Cicero
to realize why he became such a potent political force.
Little wonder that higher
education in classical Athens
included required courses in rhetoric – and this specifically for the
sake of launching one’s political career.
The point is that words
count, and speeches crafted to perfection, with a heavy dose of
structural logic and forcefully persuasive elements, are, Hillary Clinton
notwithstanding, reflective of an orderly mind transferring logical
thoughts and ideas to an audience which has waited all too long to hear
such transformative phrases.
One need always take care,
to be sure, to distinguish between fancy rhetoric that amounts to little
more than destructive and deceptive demagoguery and speeches formulated
to bring people together behind a common cause. Franklin D. Roosevelt was
a master of the persuasively turned phrase, and the result was always to
both calm and exhort a nation on the verge of, or actually in a major
war. John F. Kennedy’s inauguration speech, or his remarks at the Berlin
wall will never be forgotten because of their exquisite call for a
citizenry united in its desire for common national prerogatives.
Quite beyond all that, however, is the fact that
Obama, as he says, would represent a major change in the DC landscape.
There is every reason to believe that he would move beyond the entrenched
political hackery that has pervaded our government for so long and
surround himself with top advisors – many of them academically oriented
one would hope – who will actually bring some sound expertise to the
departments and areas over which they preside.
For too long the American
people have been subjected to political appointments made, not on the
basis of true knowledge or scientific legitimacy, but rather on
ignominious ideological grounds and a political cronyism based on support
for a president who is so intellectually at sea with just about every
aspect of government as to be embarrassingly intolerable.
Nor do I suspect that a
government run by Hillary Clinton would be any less susceptible to the
temptation of appointments made on the basis of faithful service during
the reign of Bill Clinton. Fine though some of those people, such as
Robert Reich, were, the point is that the American people are yearning
for a completely new team to clean out the Augean stables and get on with
a new intellectually inspired set of positive decisions that will turn
this country around.
The very idea that Obama’s
foreign policy would include the hitherto rancid notion that we might
actually talk to those inimical to us, that he might meet with a Castro
or an Ahmadinejad or a Chavez, sends a breath of fresh air out over the
whole international process.
If Barack Obama and his
rhetorical abilities are indicative of anything, it is that the man can
think logically and formulate plans worthy of discussion. Given what
we’ve been through for the past eight years, that alone should secure him
a job at the White House.
Will he be ready on Day
One? I have no idea. Nor did I
have any idea whether John Kennedy would be ready on Day One when I voted
for him. But I was inspired enough by his ability to convey an activist
substance that had withered under Dwight Eisenhower to give him a shot.
And so it is with Obama,
whose youth, vitality, sharp wits and lack of affiliation with the
eternally glued political establishment in Washington
might be just what we need to transform a country in the deadly grip of
debilitating sameness.
March
12, 2008
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