President Obama's speech was one of the most eagerly anticipated in recent history. So he had a pretty high bar to vault. As a former speech writer for some politicians I watch these kinds of events with more than a casual interest. Here are my thoughts:
1) The President is an accomplished orator. While there were few ringing lines in the speech I thought his delivery was almost flawless. Peggy Noonan, perhaps one of the greatest speech writers of our age said "It was a moderate speech both in tone and content, a serious and solid speech." And then she said "It was not a joyous, audacious document, not a call to arms, but a reasoned statement." I think her assessment was on target.
2) Unlike Reagan 1980 (which I liked a lot) there are not a lot of quotable lines or sound bites- but when you take the speech as a whole it's thematic content was excellent. That could have been deliberate or it could have been how the speech came out. Some of the conservatives I listened to today yammered that he was not up to the job in the speech - that is utter nonsense. Michael Medved commented that he thought the speech was not memorable - Medved may have wanted to have the six dandy lines. In this case Obama seems to have thought that the time for bites is over - when you read the text as a complete unit - I think it will stand the test of time.
3) We should make a pact to ban all future inaugural poets. There have been three previous ones. Kennedy used Robert Frost who was unable to read what he prepared so went to other verse. The other three were mediocre, at best. The one today was bizarre to the point of incoherence. Typical was the LA Times which concluded "Alexander's "Praise Song" simply didn't sing." The opening ("All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.") was a glimpse of the shape of things to come. I thought the "poem" was pretentious doggerel.
4) I thought both ministers did an excellent job of catching the moment. Rick Warren surprised his critics, except for those who are unwilling or unable to see him as anything but a conservative Christian. Joseph Lowery, a founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Council, who is 87, showed himself to be able to pull off the cadence that Jessie Jackson has so long tried to do and fail. He had some humor but also substance.
All in all, and with the exception of the poet, I thought it was a wonderful start. One line in Warren's invocation will, I hope, be carried on for some time - The California minister asked that the president be grants "the wisdom to lead us with humility, the courage to lead us with integrity, the compassion to lead us with generosity."
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2 comments:
The poem was pathetic. I likened it to a poem someone might try to write in high school when they were trying *not* to write about how bleak their lives were.
I thought it was too pedestrian to be pretentious. The poet reinforces my belief that Academe sucks all the pleasure out of poetry (and I majored in English).
Thanks for the comment. It is pretty clear that the "poet" who read that nonsense did not major in English - your comments were spot on!
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