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August 26, 2008
Exclusive: The Evasive Poetry of Barack Obama: What Should We Expect in Denver?
This week, Senator Barack Obama will officially accept the Democratic nomination at his convention in Denver. Not content with addressing the crowd in the usual basketball arena - where the rest of the convention will take place - The One has moved his speech, in particular, to the much larger nearby football stadium.
His acceptance speech will be the first ever for an African-American. It will also fall on the 45-year anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” proclamation. To say this will be the biggest media glitz-show unlike we have ever seen is still a wild understatement.
Which is all well and good. But what are we to expect from Sen. Obama’s speech itself? After his recent foul-ups at Saddleback, where Obama’s shallow answers in a non-scripted, impromptu forum – “ah-uh-ums,” “above my pay grade,”etc. – proved almost cringe-worthy for even his political opponents, we should expect a return to the diligently planned and meticulously worded rhythmical presumptiveness and grandiosity of his last great speech: Berlin.
The pie-in-the-sky mantra is wearing thin, however. The Democrat hierarchy has privately asked Obama to be more precise when speaking of his plans to bring “hope” to millions. So is it a wise idea for the Obama campaign to invariably revert back to old Berlin-form during the convention?
On the one hand, the case could be made that such vaguely optimistic loftiness got him where he is. On the other, like a Pet Rock fad that has seen its day, a Berlin-style speech, with a continued messianic theme, might underscore John McCain’s “celebrity” counter-theme.
In hindsight, Sen. Obama’s foreign trip was a disaster. At the time, the anchors of CBS, NBC, and ABC – who traveled with him as he ventured abroad, as if they were his press secretaries – all concluded his journey was a huge success. Who would turn down a gaffe-free photo-op with troops and foreign dignitaries?
With that said, his request to speak at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate was outrageous. He would have done well to watch more Seinfeld reruns, where George and Jerry delve endlessly into the nuances of social etiquette (breakup etiquette, re-gifting etiquette, coma etiquette, close-talking etiquette, double-dipping etiquette).
Sen. Obama, it became obvious in Berlin, ought to read the Emily Post of presidential etiquette: when running for executive office in the United States, there are certain things you simply refrain from doing out of respect for your predecessors. One of those things is requesting to speak to Berliners near the Brandenburg Gate.
This, the place of historic JFK and Reagan speeches, during times of historical Cold War impending-nuclear-catastrophe importance, seemed a bit much – even for an adoring, post-modernist Europe. What, as one commentator wondered, has Obama ever done to earn the Brandenburg Gate?
The Germans managed to convince Obama away from Brandenburg, but speak in Berlin he nevertheless did. The CNN split-screen contrasts of McCain checking high food prices – clumsily spilling apple sauce down an aisle at a local grocery store – and Obama preaching to 200,000 wildly cheering Germans were amazing. Yet some Americans might have identified more with the former image, rather than the latter, looking at Obama lecture to mesmerized Germans and thinking, “What’s he doing over there?”
As Obama labeled himself a “world citizen” and praised the past actions of “the world” in feeding a starving Berlin or bringing down the wall – never the solitary actions of a lonely Truman or confidant Reagan – some Americans might have been wondering, “What has this guy ever done to fight tyranny in Europe?”
To hear Sen. Obama speak about the horrors of Soviet totalitarianism to Germans – as if they needed to be told by a former disciple of KGB-proxy Frank Marshall Davis – was an irony not lost on at least a few of us. While listening to the speech, some might have wondered whether or not 20-something “Barry” took a hard-line against communism at Columbia, challenging peers and professors alike about the morality in rolling back and bringing down the Stalinist superpower.
Somehow, I get the feeling he never led the rhetorical charge in class about the need to topple the Soviet Union. With that in mind, take note of how many times Sen. Obama mentions contemporary Russia’s autocratic transition during his speech in Denver. (As a contrast, in the spirit of having a good time, consider playing the Denver Convention Drinking Game: each time Obama says the word “change,” take a shot of your favorite whiskey.)
The Berlin speech itself was popcorn worthy, and while watching, a whole host of observations could quickly be made. For starters, Europeans love it when an American reminds them how imperfect the United States is.
Usually reserved for cranky diplomats, save-Mother-Earth-activists, and Hollywood actors, to suddenly hear such deep-seated psychological relief from a post-racial, eloquent presidential candidate – of all people – must have, to honor Christ Matthews, sent a tingle up the audience’s collective legs.
Obama, likewise, visibly enjoyed reminding Germans he was a different soft of American from what they were used to, yet again advantageously evoking his race into the (European) public discourse. A false claim – they know Powell and Rice pretty well, no? – it was nonetheless apparent he gained pleasure from mentioning it. As in Berlin, watch for this in Denver.
Additionally, it is hard to think of an orator who, while giving a speech, stops so often and so recurrently either expecting, or in hopes of generating, spontaneous audience applause. The next time you’re listening to someone – anyone, it needn’t matter – give a speech, take note of the frequency with which he or she pauses in expectation of clapping. Normally, it occurs every few minutes; a short frequency time-frame is every minute or so.
Not with Barack. He pauses long and he pauses often. After the melodramatic downwards MLK-like theatrical tremble he adds to the last syllables of “important” words – be on the lookout for this as well – he stops and awaits the adulation. An advisor of his should confide that far too much time is wasted this way.
Far too much time is likewise put into the text of speeches, as well. Berlin is a classic example. “This is the moment when every nation in Europe must have the chance to choose its own tomorrow free from the shadows of yesterday,” he surmised. But simply stating “The trans-Atlantic alliance will be as important in the future as it is today” would have sufficed. “We need not stand idly by and watch the further spread of the deadly atom” is poetic and cute, but “Nuclear proliferation is a problem” would have been a lot less fluffy – no “need nots” or “idly bys” were necessary. Note to the Obama camp: every time your man says something lyrical like “deadly atom,” a lot of us think “empty words.”
In jest, one blogger even posted a quiz to his readers, seeing if they could discern quotes from Sen. Obama’s Berlin speech with the utopian lyrics of Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie’s 1985 famine-relief “We are the World” mega-hit.
Michael Barone calls this “eloquence fatigue.” With a teleprompter, Obama has the gift of the gab, and he knows it – and is thus becoming “a sophistical rhetorician inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity,” as Benjamin Disraeli once described William Gladstone.
He should continue to give good speeches, but when it comes to the vernacular, nomenclature, and spontaneously acquired Bible belt drawls and preacher accents, a little more substance, and a little more down-to-earth sincerity wouldn’t hurt. Millions of Americans are dying to know: Is there any “there” there?
My advice for Denver? Just take it easy, Hawthorne.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Nicholas Guariglia is a polemic and essayist who writes on Islam and Middle Eastern geopolitics. He can be reached at nickguar@comcast.net.
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