~ in Tampa, Florida ~
The teleprompters have landed. Fresh off his State of the Union address last night, President Barack Obama is here today for a follow-up tour that begins at the University of Tampa this afternoon. It’s hard to get away from the President these days; Obama is ubiquitous.
It is striking how common it is to ridicule the President. A year ago, one skirted sacrilege to do so. He was the orator whose very words would shape history. Just a year later, his greatest asset has apparently lost its power. Even the otherwise loyal John Stuart chides Obama for setting up his teleprompters in a sixth-grade classroom. Bloggers smirk when he uses them to address a cabinet meeting of a dozen people. The mellifluous one is now mocked.
The teleprompters are trivial. But they stand for something serious, namely that Obama appears to be heavy on presentation, and light on substance. Too much hat and not enough cattle, as his inarticulate predecessor might have said. Obama is a veritable volcano of verbiage, but nothing seems to remain. The words don’t last, disappearing from memory soon after they scroll past on those screens.
Disappointment in the putative orator came not after one year for me, but one hour. I had admired on television his set-piece campaign speeches. Then I went to the inauguration. Only hearts of stone would have been unmoved by the euphoric, emotional crowds attending the grand imperial setting of American presidential liturgy. We were ready for a rhetorical feast. There were only crumbs. Within minutes his words had evaporated like hot air in the January cold. It was hard to remember anything that he had to say.
Perhaps, one feared, he really didn’t have very much to say. Yet what followed was a year of nonstop talking which continues in Tampa today. Hundreds of speeches — 30 on health care alone. Yet even by the President’s own admission — in yet another television interview this past week — people are unclear as to his program.
A critical part of FDR’s management of the Great Depression and prosecution of the Second World War was his fireside chats. There were about 30 of them in a 12-year presidency. Communications are different now, but Obama gave 158 media interviews in his first year, including 90 for television, or one about every four days. Even if he had the intelligence of Thomas Aquinas and the persuasiveness of Pericles, Obama would be hard pressed to have something noteworthy to say that often.
Yet he talks and talks and talks. There is no problem for which the solution is not another speech, another interview, another campaign appearance. The sheer omnipresence leads to another problem which undermines his oratorical skills. Someone who talks so much invariably falls back on the subject which he knows best. For Obama that is himself. It is not vainglory. As demonstrated by his beautifully written autobiography, Obama has thought a lot about his own story and what it might mean for America and the world. Hence the default for the teleprompter has been set to autobiographical mode.
In Berlin as a candidate in 2008, he began his address to the world by talking about his own novel story. When he addressed Berliners again on the 20th anniversary of the Wall’s fall last November, he made no mention of John Paul II or Reagan or Gorbachev, but wondered if those who breached the wall ever dreamt that a black man would become President.
At the D-Day anniversary in June he talked about his grandmother, his grandfather and his great-uncle. Accepting the Nobel Prize, he delivered a fine speech about war and peace, but indeed a singular performance: “I prohibited torture”; “I reserve the right to act unilaterally”; “I ordered Guantanamo closed.” His humility was self-absorbed: “I do not bring with me today a definitive solution to the problem of war.”
Then there was the two-for-one trip to Copenhagen to secure the Olympic Games for Chicago. Michelle Obama first spoke of her girlhood, her family, her father’s battle with multiple sclerosis. The President followed up with how he chose to live in Chicago after moving around a lot in his youth. There wasn’t much about the Olympics. Chicago came in fourth.
Plenty of pretty words, more than ably delivered. But increasingly that is all there is, and it is not enough. Perhaps the President senses it himself. Just last week, in the midst of a speech in which he referred to himself 132 times, he interrupted himself: “This is not about me.” No, it’s not. Great oratory rarely is.
Tags: National Post