Prose When Poetry Was Due

Posted January 20, 2009

What a sight! More than a million jubilant people jammed into the National Mall to watch history pivot. Hundreds of millions more watched or listened to Obama from all over the world.

Obama delivered a fine inaugural address but oddly, he chose prose over poetry. Instead of words to lift souls, we got a sermon that was sober, serious, and smart. The address was as sensible as a good pair of sneakers and about as inspiring.

It also struck the right political notes. We are in a hole and before Obama tries to dig us out, he wants it very clear that it was the other guy who who got us in. But no Obama inaugural should be devoid of poetry and at yesterday's festivities nobody confused the meandering Elizabeth Alexander with Robert Frost.

Obama attracted what may be the largest crowd ever assembled on American soil and almost surely the the largest media audience for a speech in world history. But little of what he said will end up etched in granite. For his inaugural, Obama decided not to move the crowd to weeping, shouting or cheering as he had the day before at the Lincoln Memorial on Martin Luther King Day.

THE SERMON

He chose instead to brace Americans for battle by restating traditional values and reshaping our political purpose. There was no talk about "hope" or "change" and that's fine. The time for campaign hubris is gone. At 18 minutes, the speech was short (believe it or not, Clinton's first was even shorter).. At his address in Grant's Park the night he won the election, Obama also kept his message brief and canceled the fireworks. Maybe serious is the new soaring.

Or not. If you don't haul out the grade A oratory to inspire and motivate people in large numbers in a crisis and on the occasion of the largest media event in human history, exactly when do you haul it out?

Ultimately of course, most people did not care what Barrack Obama said. For many of the gathered millions, Obama was all the symbolism they needed — a cool, smart anti-Bush, African-American president. He could have told campfire stories.

But his address lacked not only stories — it lacked themes. He
of course did what all inaugural addresses do: praise the indomitable
American spirit, call for personal responsibility and bipartisanship,
and face the future bravely and optimistically. In addition, Obama laid
out an intelligent, matter-of-fact summary of American values and what
he intends to do to restore them. He avoided State-of the Union wonkery
and it is safe to predict that if his presidency is successful the
inaugural address will be well-regarded. But it is hard to see how the speech helps him succeed.

The remarkable civil rights preacher Joseph E. Lowery was more thematic than Obama. My jaw dropped when he opened his benediction by reciting the third stanza of the Negro National Anthem — a frequently controversial hymn that has given hope to progressive political activists of all colors for over a century. He closed his prayer with a reinterpretation of Big Bill Broonzy's "Black, Brown and White" that sounded like Jesse Jackson channeling Dr. Seuss ("when brown can stick around; when yellow will be mellow…"), but Dr. Lowrey's opening was beautiful and courageous:

God of our weary years,

God of our silent tears,

Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;

Thou who has by Thy might

Led us into the light,

Keep us forever in the path, we pray.

Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,

Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;

HIGHLIIGHTS

If Obama's sermon was less inspirational than the occasion called for, there was still a lot to like about it.

He recovered gracefully from a klutzy Chief Justice. The job of Chief Justice John Roberts' was to recite 35 words strictly as constructed in the Constitution. He flubbed it horribly. He moved the adverb to avoid a split infinitive and ended up with "…to execute the office of the President faithfully" instead of "to faithfully execute the office…". Obama politely paused to let him correct himself, whereupon Roberts dropped the work "execute". Having tried twice to help Roberts recover, Obama did the respectful thing and recited the presidential oath incorrectly. Good chance that he will now be forced into a private do-over to silence the nutjobs who will use the botched public effort to question his legitimacy. What a needless embarrassment.

His tone was realistic, sober, and steady. Most people remember not what you say but how you say it. As befits a world leader in a time of crisis, Obama was serious — there was not a single throwaway applause line in the speech. His preternatural calm approached sangfroid. But after twenty years of guys who mangle the language, the office, or both, I'll take it gladly.

His pacing was up and to the right. The speech got better as it went — sort of like the campaign. The discussions of Gross Domestic Product were pedantic — GDP does not belong in an inaugural address. But he followed it with a reference to "timeless values and truths like hard work and honesty and courage, to which we must all return" that worked well.

He gave us a muscular speech with a clean political break. This was more Churchill "Blood, Sweat, and Tears" and "we will fight on the beaches" than FDR "…fear itself". Perhaps Obama decided that he was inspiration enough. His political dominance, communication skills, and sense of the economic crisis gives him an amazing opportunity to rewrite the social contract, redefine the Presidency, and reshape the role of government. Most presidents never get a shot at any of this.

He looked fully up to the job. He was happy to threaten the bad guys not as someone determined to remake them in America's image but as a pragmatist. He avoided partisanship but, having graciously thanked his predecessor, proceeded to announce a clear new direction, He opened with a timely Biblical quote about "putting away childish things" and continued to:

"We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do."

He spoke to the world not just to Americans.

"To all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more."

and

"our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use. Our security emanates from the justness of our cause; the force of our example; the tempering qualities of humility and restraint."

Nice. Not JFK " Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty." but not bad.

He understood the moment: With the surviving Tuskegee Airman and Civil Rights veterans (including the heroic Congressman John Lewis) in attendance, swearing on Lincoln's Bible on the eve of the Great Liberator's bicentennial, and on the day after Martin Luther King Day, Obama did not need to dwell heavily on civil rights progress. He sounded a fine note with:

"Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends – honest and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism – these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths."

Still not JFK's

"Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world."

He married hope to virtue. Nothing wrong with hope, but it only takes you so far as an engine of political change. In his call for responsibility, his parable of Washington ("…in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive…") and his recitation of timeless values, Obama tied hope to virtue. This is potent political combination was well known to the Greeks, the Puritans, Machiavelli, and the Founders. The strongest case for the Obama inaugural address being historic would be built on this important change.

He found some great phrases. If the speech lacked poetic passages, it nonetheless contained some fine phrases.

"We chose our better history".

“The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or
too small, but whether it works.” — as concise a description of pragmatism as you will ever hear.

"Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and
irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure
to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.,” (here I would argue he easily bettered FDR: “The rulers of the exchange of mankind’s
goods have failed.”)

“a nation cannot prosper
long when it favors only the prosperous”

HUH?

Three phrases got past Obama and his speech writers.

A mixed metaphor. He took a sweet alliteration: “we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and
segregation…." and closed the sentence with "…, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more
united.” I think I just tasted a chapter

Lousy use of passive voice. In his opening stanza, Obama declared "Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real, they are
serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short
span of time. But know this America: They will be met." The line fell so flat, I winced. The active voice (…We will not meet them easily or quickly. But know this America: we will meet them") is fully serviceable and removes any possibility that he plans to wait for the Chinese to meet our challenges.
Miscount. Obama declared that "Forty-four Americans have now
taken the presidential oath." But trivia buffs know that the real number is 43, because Grover
Cleveland was both our 22nd and our 24th President. Had he corrected
this technical error however, Obama would have confused 99% of all listeners.

DOES IT MATTER?

It would be interesting to hear how Obama thought about his speech. Why did he soar higher in the talk he gave to 400,000 people the day before at the Lincoln Memorial? Why did he decide to give an intelligent but somber inaugural address instead of the realistic but transcendent one that the occasion deserved?

Perhaps he had studied some of the great inaugural addresses of the past, including this one — termed "shockingly good" by liberal New Yorker columnist and former Carter speech writer Hendrik Hertzberg. The speech declared that

".. the stakes for America are never small. If our country does not lead the cause of freedom, it will not be led. If we do not turn the hearts of children toward knowledge and character, we will lose their gifts and undermine their idealism. If we permit our economy to drift and decline, the vulnerable will suffer most.

We must live up to the calling we share. Civility is not a tactic or a sentiment. It is the determined choice of trust over cynicism, of community over chaos. And this commitment, if we keep it, is a way to shared accomplishment."

This was from the first inaugural of the man who left town in disgrace yesterday. Purely as a speech, George W. Bush's first inaugural was arguably better than Barack Obama's. Which tell us all we need to know about the predictive power of inaugural addresses.