Obama Makes `Defining Moment' With Rhetoric Evoking JFK & King
By Indira Lakshmanan
Jan. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Barack Obama is making his mark on U.S. politics as the most memorable orator since Ronald Reagan, even if he doesn't win the Democratic presidential nomination.
The Illinois senator has energized crowds, garnering praise from Democrats and Republicans alike for an oratorical style that focuses on his sense of mission and touches only glancingly on policy.
``The choice in this election is not between regions or religions or genders; it's not about rich versus poor, young versus old, and it is not about black versus white,'' Obama, 46, said at a rally in Washington yesterday. ``It's about whether we're going to seize this moment to write the next great American story, so someday we can tell our children that this was the time when we healed our nation.''
Obama and longtime front-runner Hillary Clinton are locked in a tight race, with two primary wins each. His appeal to voters is fueled, in part, by his speeches, which have earned him comparisons to John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King.
``I was almost moved to tears by the power and the breadth of Obama's message,'' said Ted Sorensen, 79, the former speechwriter for Kennedy and an Obama supporter. ``His speaking style and what he stood for reminded me of JFK, of national interests uncluttered by the interests of race, religion or even political party.''
`Inspired'
Caroline Kennedy, JFK's daughter, endorsed Obama over the weekend. Appearing with him yesterday in Washington, she said he offers the ``same sense of hope and inspiration'' as her father did. Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy, the late president's brother, also endorsed Obama at yesterday's event.
By contrast with Obama, Clinton, 60, largely devotes her speeches to detailed descriptions of policy, from the alternative minimum tax to health insurance for self-employed realtors to U.S. policy toward Bolivia.
``I get a little wonky,'' the New York senator said in an interview published in the Jan. 21 issue of Newsweek. ``I get a little out there with details, with five-point plans for this and 10-point plans for that.''
Clinton, who is leading in national polls, often gets the better of Obama in televised debates, forums that rarely lend themselves to rhetorical eloquence.
Clinton Playbook
As he prepares to compete with her in the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday primary contests in 22 states, Obama may need to take a page from her playbook and use his speeches to display his own grasp of policy rather than his command of rhetoric.
``It's not that you have to lose your vision or lofty goals; it's that you have to talk about other things along the way,'' said Stephen Lucas, professor of communication arts at University of Wisconsin at Madison and author of a soon-to-be- published anthology of the top 100 American speeches of the 20th century.
Obama already has soared past more established and experienced Democratic candidates to challenge Clinton. This is, in large part, thanks to his ability to inspire a growing segment of Democrats -- as well as some independents and Republicans -- with a message and language that are inclusive, memorable turns of phrase, rolling cadences, repetition and a rich voice.
These skills were on display Jan. 20, as Obama spoke from King's former pulpit at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. He called on Americans of all colors and creeds to ``march with me and join your voice with mine, and together we will sing the song that tears down the walls that divide us, and lift up an America that is truly indivisible, with liberty, and justice, for all.''
Signature Theme
Obama first introduced this signature theme of unity in his keynote address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, where he decried those who ``slice-and-dice our country into red states and blue states; red states for Republicans, blue states for Democrats.''
``There is not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there is the United States of America,'' he said.
Obama's message echoes Robert F. Kennedy's, Lucas said. ``What both of them communicated is hope, optimism, inclusiveness and national unity; that we can and should be better as a country than we are,'' he said.
Since Franklin D. Roosevelt, only Kennedy and Reagan habitually strove for that loftier tone. Former President Bill Clinton, for example, largely kept to a conversational tone, and left behind few memorable speeches.
`Inspirational Style'
``You don't have too many people today who go for that inspirational style, in part because if you don't hit the right note, you fall on your face,'' said Robert Schlesinger, author of the forthcoming book ``White House Ghosts: Presidents and their Speechwriters.''
On a spectrum from plain speaking to grand oratory, Obama probably exemplifies a ``middle-style'' most similar to Reagan's, mixing colloquial language with lofty, values-laden themes, said David Eisenhower, who teaches a course on presidential speechmaking at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
``There's an innocent quality about Barack that adds poignancy to the improbability of his quest,'' said Eisenhower, a grandson of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. ``And he has an extraordinary ability to get crowds to react and participate in sync.''
Reagan's Vision
Schlesinger said Obama sounds like President Kennedy when he tells audiences ``that I am not going to promise you things, I am going to demand things of you.'' At the same time, Obama's frequent references to the opportunities that American society offers are reminiscent of Reagan's vision of ``a shining city upon a hill.''
Obama's call for unity is both overt and inherent in his choice of words. In the speech he gave after his Jan. 3 victory in Iowa's first Democratic contest for president, he used ``we'' and ``you'' more than twice as often as ``I'' or ``me.'' The message is that he leads a movement, not a party; that he is a vehicle, his supporters the driving force.
``Our destiny,'' he said, ``will not be written for us, but by us, by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be.''
Reinforcing his biracial heritage and his self-positioning as a candidate who can heal America's racial divide, he also routinely pairs a white historical figure with a black one: Abraham Lincoln and Willie Mays, Kennedy and King.
Even Republicans admit to being impressed.
`Biblical Cadence'
``Stylistically, I rank him quite high -- I like his Biblical cadence, parallel structure, alliteration, repetition, involving the crowd as participants,'' said Curt Smith, a former speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush, now a senior English lecturer at the University of Rochester.
Still, not everyone is convinced his mastery of style and emotion are matched by substance.
Obama's speeches are ``extremely pleasing and moving,'' said Ted Widmer, a historian at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, who was a speechwriter for President Clinton and now supports Hillary Clinton. ``But I'm not sure I've heard a truly arresting thought.''
To contact the reporter on this story: Indira Lakshmanan in Washington at ilakshmanan@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: January 29, 2008 00:05 EST |
