In this week’s New York magazine, Sam Anderson has written a brilliant piece on Obama’s rhetorical brilliance and the challenge he faces with his upcoming speech at the Democratic National Convention. Anderson makes a convincing case for the the necessity of brilliant discourse in public policy: “If you can think your way through a sentence, through the algorithms involved in condensing information verbally and pitching it to an audience, through the complexities of animating historical details into narrative, then you can think your way through a policy paper, or a diplomatic discussion, or a 3 A.M. phone call.” The Poet-Rhetor also posted on the same subject with equal insight several days ago: “The critical response to Obama’s eloquence is the standard accusation of ‘all-style-no-substance,’ but many people find him compelling because they realize that eloquence ought to be one of the job requirements of the office of president. In the Ciceronian rhetorical tradition, there is a clear understanding that civil governance requires the arts of rhetoric. Eloquent speech is the medium of democratic rule.”
It has always perplexed me how the political discourse in the country has been dumbed down to a point where 40 years ago, RFK could eloquently quote Aeschylus and Camus in his speeches and now Obama is seen as elitist because of his intelligence. For Obama, the challenge now is to win over those skeptics without abandoning his trademark eloquence. As Anderson put it so succinctly, Obama has to find a way to “blow the roof off the building without scaring anyone inside, to give the soaring speech of his lifetime that somehow doesn’t leave behind anyone on the ground.” Can he do it? I certainly hope so.