Time for Obama to be as good as his eloquent word
Dazzling oratorical skills no substitute for action
This week, the first black American president will move into the White House -- a residence that was partly constructed by black slave labour. And, although Barack Obama is not himself descended from slaves, his wife (and thus his children) are. Whatever President Obama achieves, or fails to achieve in office, the extraordinarily moving fact of his election will dominate history's view of him.
Within living memory, black children had been barred from entry into segregated schools by a duly elected state governor. Three civil rights activists who had travelled to Mississippi to help with the registration of black voters were murdered -- and their white assassins were allowed to walk free by a local jury. Black citizens of a democratic society were, by statute in many states, refused seating at lunch counters and forced to the backs of buses.
For every black kid selling drugs on a street corner in Baltimore, and every middle-class black professional who has succeeded against the odds, not to mention white baby-boomers of my generation who spent our student years marching in civil rights demonstrations, this is a monumental event that can never be gainsaid.
The question must be whether the symbolism of Obama's election as president will be matched by his substance in office. Any attempt to answer it must run on the available facts, the first and most important of which is double-edged: Mr Obama is extraordinarily articulate.
After his race, that is the single most significant difference between him and his predecessor. I do not personally believe the speeches that he has made thus far have been the equal of John Kennedy's, but perhaps one is always inclined to be sentimental about the seminal events of one's youth -- and I was present in the arena, as a schoolgirl, when Kennedy made his truly remarkable acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention in 1960.
But, by today's demotic standards, Obama is certainly eloquent. Not only does he find the words in which to frame the most persuasive possible account of himself, but his manner of engaging the audience is pitch perfect. And, in a democratic culture, the ability to talk well, to persuade and to present a case, is a commodity whose value is beyond measure. To adapt WH Auden's lines on Yeats, public opinion "worships language and forgives, everyone by whom it lives".
So why do I think that there is anything dubious about Obama's gift for words? Because the miraculous effect of them cannot be a substitute for action. Make no mistake: words can accomplish lots of things in themselves, notably changing the minds of your opponents, persuading the recalcitrant to support your plan, resolving disputes between partisans. But what I sense in Obama's love for abstract concepts and diffuse rhetorical devices is not so much the use of language as a facilitator of action, but as a way of disguising lack of decision.
At how many points do his beautifully constructed passages connect with concrete reality? His failure to define or elaborate the famous "change we can believe in" mantra has been much commented on, but even giving him the benefit of the doubt on that point how clear were any of his substantive intentions from his campaign speeches?
Withdrawal
In fact, his policy pronouncements since being elected have been notable for their startling lack of any abrupt shift from the Bush years. In his speech in Baltimore last Saturday, he said that America was engaged in two wars, one that needed to be ended responsibly and another that needed to be waged wisely. In other words, there will be no precipitate withdrawal from Iraq, and Afghanistan will be pursued with vigour. This is precisely what the Bush administration had concluded was the right course for the future.
On the economic crisis, too, he is not straying all that far from the outgoing administration. His treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, has been heavily involved in the Bush financial rescue project. Again in his Baltimore speech, he seemed to suggest that benefit dependency would not be viewed sympathetically by his administration: there was a better life in store, he said, for those willing to work. Those words could have been spoken by any self-respecting Republican.
All of this leads some conservative commentators to conclude that, at least on the two main emergencies, the Obama administration may be comfortingly familiar. Charles Krauthammer has called the phenomenon "continuity we can believe in".
This impression is possibly reinforced by last week's stunningly clever decision to invite 10 commentators on the right to a private dinner with the President-elect so that they might be consulted -- and charmed. This tactic reminds me very much of Tony Blair's philosophy of keeping your enemies closer to you than your friends.
Principles
In both camps, New Labour and Obama-land, the commitment to "the big tent" in which "all the talents" can be absorbed seems to be connected to the belief that finding solutions to real problems is a matter of verbal dexterity.
The new president has recruited to his economics and foreign policy teams an enormous array of expert advisers and a veritable platoon of academics and quasi-academics, many of whom disagree with one another about quite fundamental principles.
Of course, there is a generous and engaging quality about this, a sense is clearly intended that, in a time of national crisis, the best minds of all persuasions should be brought together. Well, yes, but brought together to do what exactly?
When you are confronting national emergencies on two fronts is there time to indulge in a lengthy seminar? Government is not a think tank.
What is going to happen when a clutch of Obama advisers disagrees with another clutch? Will Mr Obama himself have the decisiveness and resolution to make a final ruling and act on it without hesitation? Or is he going to preside over a talking shop that ties his administration up in endless qualifications and subtexts, which the president will be able to present with all the subtlety and thoughtfulness of which he is capable -- but which will in the end amount to fatal vacillation? (© The Daily Telegraph)
- Janet Daley
