America’s new three little words: YES WE CAN

Obama is an excellent rhetorician.

There’s a large part of me that would like to see an Obama presidency just so I could listen to those speeches for, perhaps, eight years. The man is either extremely well prepared, or is an artist who can shape his spontaneity to his will and practical purpose. Or both. Either bodes well for a presidency. Alliteration, anadiplosis, anaphora, antistrophe and o so many other flourishes flow from him like milk. It has a beauty. Does it matter? It does to someone who thinks that a president needs to be intelligent, fast-thinking, educated and inspiring.

He’s not Bush, is he? And I’d like to meet his script-writer.

Moreover, “Yes We Can” may be one of the best political slogans in a century – one of few that do justice to the verbal power of the man with whom this formerly innocuous phrase may be forever associated.

Yes: Simplest and shortest unqualified statement of positivity.

We: Simplest and shortest assertion of unity

Can: Simplest and shortest statement of capability.

Positivity, unity and capability. Nice.

And together, the three words stand as a firm refusal to engage any argument that would seek to limit a great nation’s creativity or power to define itself. That definitely would be a change.