Posted on 04/10/2009 8:31:45 PM PDT by Congressman Billybob
President Obama’s trip to Europe last week offered several more opportunities to observe his speeches. I listened to several of them, to see if they had changed at all. They had not.
On my desktop I have stored two Doonesbury cartoons from decades years ago. Back then, when many of Doonesbury’s characters were still the same ones we both knew in college, I admired his work. (That was before his politics turned vicious and non-factual, shall we say._ The best of a cartoonist’s skill is to skewer his subject with a handful of words and a few strokes of the pen.
This particular strip was about Senator Ted Kennedy giving a press conference. The first three panels showed a gaggle of reporters and a spaghetti plate of microphone wires. Zonker was in the foreground as a reporter. From off-screen right came phrases from the Senator. “World peace... health insurance... education... social security....”
In the last panel, an exasperated Zonker cried out, “A verb, Senator, a verb!”
That’s the central point in examining the speeches of any public figure. It is to ask the question that Zonker raised. It is, what do you propose to do? Where, if anywhere, does this speech lead?
As I write this, I am watching a Military Channel show about Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Two men spoke that day to commemorate the opening of the Cemetery for that decisive battle of the Civil War. The invited featured speaker at the dedication was Edward Everett, the former president of Harvard College and one of the 19th century’s most celebrated orators. Everett spoke for two hours. Afterward, President Lincoln spoke for two minutes.
The oration by Everett is entirely forgotten. But Lincoln’s words live on, carved in marble, as part of the very definition of what America should be, and is, and what we Americans are to live in such a nation. It goes even beyond that, it defined what it means for any citizens to live free, in a free nation.
When he was just a candidate, I wrote that Barack Obama’s speeches were like cotton candy. They seemed to be substantial and good, but when you got into them there was nothing there but a handful of sugar with a much air, spun in.
The ability to speak well is good in the few Presidents who have had that skill. But it also represents a danger. Those who speak well and easily, can fool both themselves and others if they use their skills to conceal their lack of substance in their speeches.
I’ve been researching the writings of Benjamin Franklin for some current projects. People like Franklin, Adams and Jefferson, wrote and published many statements on many subjects with great skill. One can always find new and excellent quotes from any of them, by reading just a little more.
Franklin got to this point about oratory in 1735. In Poor Richard’s Almanack, he wrote, “Here comes the orator! With his flood of words, and his drop of reason.”
This column is incomplete, deliberately so. I have not quoted a single sentence from any speech by Obama, and will not do so. Here is the challenge:
Pick any speech by Obama, any time, on any subject. It is far easier to analyze the real content, if any, in a speech by reading it after the fact, than by listening to it live. That is both the appeal and the danger of a demagogue. At the time, the speech may seem to be substantial.
So, pick your own speech. Read it at your leisure. See if you find a flurry of find-sounding words, with little or no real substance to it. And if you find that, reflect on one of the failures of the Framers of the Constitution. In the Federalist, No. 68, Alexander Hamilton wrote that “talents for low intrigue and the little arts of popularity” may suffice for a man to become governor, but the Electoral College would prevent such people from becoming President.
That hope has long since been defeated. We’ve had more than a few Presidents of inadequate ability. We need to outlast them with minimal damage. But first, we have to recognize them. - 30 -
About the Author: John Armor practiced law in the Supreme Court for 33 years. He now lives on the Eastern Continental Divide in the Blue Ridge of North Carolina. John_Armor@aya.yale.edu
- 30 -
John / Billybob
Doonesbury was ALWAYS an anti-American commie simp.
From his happy-go-lucky VC until now.
John / Billybob
“Doonesbury” can’t hold a candle to the best political strip ever, “Bloom County.”
I agree. I miss Bloom County. But that ain’t the subject I wrote about this week.
John
I know. Sorry. I still miss Bloom County.
Well done, sir.
St. Paul said it well in First Corinthians:
1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
I wasn’t his classmate, but I read his tripe during the later parts of the VN war, when he made light of the VC as a bunch of fun-loving light-hearted chaps with a great sense of humor.
I did’t find it any funnier then than today.
Commie simp then, commie simp today.
John
You're right. But I bet he can quote the Koran, chapter and verse.
BTW, Trudeau was either '70 or '71, I believe '71. I thought you were '64. (Did I mess up?)
Biggest laugh out loud today! Bravo!
“In the Federalist, No. 68, Alexander Hamilton wrote that “talents for low intrigue and the little arts of popularity” may suffice for a man to become governor, but the Electoral College would prevent such people from becoming President.”
But we dismantled the Electoral College which was put in place to defeat the popular tyrant. Looks like we forgot a lot of history.
Doonesbury skewering John Kerry in 1971. It was always a strip with a leftist viewpoint, but at one time Trudeau had much less patience for the pomposity, showboating, and general lack of substance shown by the Kerry and Ted Kennedy types. That Trudeau would have been much more skeptical of Obama.
http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/kerry_faq.html
Yes, I was '64. I'm going to a reunion this year. I hope my classmates have not all gotten so bald and fat that they don't recognize me. LOL.
John / Billybob
As for Trudeau's year, I'll take the OCD's word for it:
Or the St. Petersburg Times:
Harvard-Yale games, which mentions Dowling's senior year and the infamous 29-29 tie.
Or, Britannica Online. Or, AYA (although I wouldn't give those clowns any hits, personal reasons).
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