Great Orator Poor Speech (Guest Voice)
President Barack Obama seeks unity but his first act created a bit of division: some felt he gave a great inaugural speech, others felt it was just good, still others felt you can’t judge an inaugural speech until the President serves awhile. And some, like conservative talk show host Michael Reagan, felt it was a poor speech and not as good as Reagan’s Dad’s. Guest Voice posts do not necessarily reflect the opinion of TMV or its writers.
Great Orator, Poor Speech
by Michael Reagan
I was talking to Peter Robinson, who helped write the immortal “Tear Down This Wall, Mr. Gorbachev” speech delivered in Berlin by my dad, Ronald Reagan.
He told me he went back to the archives for 1981 and pulled out a couple of my dad’s quotes from the 1981 inaugural address and compared them with a couple of quotes from Barack Obama’s inaugural address. He noted that while my dad said it was “morning in America,” with Obama it almost went back in tone to Jimmy Carter’s infamous “malaise” speech, which pictured an America down in the dumps.
For Obama it was more like “mourning” in America.
You can hear echoes of that malaise speech in Obama’s inaugural address when he said, “These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land — a nagging fear that America’s decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights.”
There were, however, striking similarities between Ronald Reagan’s speeches and those of both Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, Robinson said, because the Democrats have long been big students of my dad’s speeches, going back time and again to the archives to read the words of the Great Communicator and learn from his techniques in communicating.
If you listen to Barack Obama you hear his programs and policies described the way Ronald Reagan would have described them had they been his agenda.
The difference between the two men was that my dad believed everything he said all the way to the core of his being, while Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats use speeches to mask what they really believe.
The bottom line is that the new president’s widely anticipated inaugural address, which beforehand was widely touted to be another stunning example of exalted oratory, just plain fell flat.
It wasn’t the soaring eloquence for which he is rightly noted — it was in fact the kind of speech a Chicago ward heeler would have made to his constituents — “ full of sound and fury,” as Shakespeare would have put it, “but signifying nothing.”
Perhaps the most noteworthy event during the inauguration was the jeremiad disguised as a prayer offered by the grizzled old veteran of the long-past civil rights struggle, the Rev. Joseph Lowery.
As Barack Obama smiled, Rev. Lowery ended the prayer by saying “Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around — when yellow will be mellow — when the red man can get ahead, man — and when white will embrace what is right.”
As Rush Limbaugh remarked, Lowery’s so-called prayer was far more memorable that the president’s entire inaugural address.
Amen.
I wonder if President Obama had any idea of what he was saying when he praised “the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things — some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.”
These “risk takers … who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom,” are the small and large business men and women of America who do the hiring, create products, provide needed services and compete with foreign competitors. They are the very people he wants to burden with heavier and heavier taxation and needless regulations that hamper their attempts to compete with foreign businesses and industries.
The craven New York Times might have had what have been described as “Obamisms” over the speech, but saner observers are simply yawning.
©2009 Mike Reagan. Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by: Cagle Cartoons, Inc. The above cartoon is also copyrighted and licensed to run on this site. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.
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3 Responses to “Great Orator Poor Speech (Guest Voice)”
One presumable fury and sound from the Obama speech was “…we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.” The headline “Barack Obama has ordered prosecutors to seek a suspension of military trials at the controversial Guantanamo Bay” appearing a day after his inauguration seems to suggest that this one at least is something just a bit more than “signifying nothing.” One wonders how many twenty-four hour news cycles it might take for Mr. Reagan’s special “insights” to lie in tatters. And yet what a wonderful and peculiar universe it might be if, indeed, Mr. Reagan turned out to be a sort of latter day “Being John Malkovich” who could inhabit President “Obama and his fellow Democrats” to report on the core of their beings, what they really believe. Ah, but “…Malkovitch” and “Brother Rat” were just movies.
The speech was fine, suitable for and characteristic of Obama, his campaign's success, and for his many campaign-active supporters.
Michael Reagan's attacks are possibly legitimate regarding other liberal Democrats in this country, but they are a misstep and a case of overreach (not merely hyperbole) here. It reminds me of the occasional true blunder we hear from others. I was on the road this past weekend between Michigan and Iowa and in Indiana, traffic was stopped dead for a couple of hours on I-80 on Friday, and at times I had cycled through the AM and FM stations to try to listen to news and other related programming, often about the inauguration, naturally. On the Limbaugh show I heard another example of Limbaugh's occasional misstep. Limbaugh is accurate about so much, but occasionally he is far from realistic. He has occasionally hyped the Obama extremist threat that most of us don't see at all. (Hillary Clinton's extremism was the cause of so much of the 1994 election results, but none of us feared an extremist threat from her this year. She, Obama, and others have learned their lesson from the 1990s.) Certainly Obama can potentially try taking things more leftward than the mainstream, but the 1990s lesson about this likely has tempered any such desires or ambitions now. (So has the economy!)
Moreover, I believe Reagan and others should not confuse Obama's circumstantial career details with what may be attempted now, necessarily. For example, Obama has been associated with Chicago and with community activists, which have been notorious (and this was a legitimate liability to identify during Obama's campaign). But remember that Obama is a creature of dinosaur Blue Nation territory at its oldest. Of course you're going to find him associated in Chicago with relicts from the 1960s, the “urban America” junk, not just radical liabilties like Ayers. In the Upstate New York hard-core Blue Nation city I lived in for two years, there was still an Urban League office there. That doesn't mean everyone nowadays is still demanding action on, or “discovering” the “need” for action on, the 1960s “urban problem,” the reaction to which silliness is similar in a way to the reaction by Reagan here to what he perceives, or misperceives in Obama.
Obama is from decrepit dinosaur lands, but he is trying to lead and develop a contemporary Democratic Party. Don't forget that its future lies where the people are going and the populations and economies will again sometime be growing: the Sunbelt (turning Red Nation bluer).
P.S. I only listened to Limbaugh for a few minutes, incidentally, because he had a guest on whom I have come to dislike substantially — someone who engages in deliberately provocative statements, and wild generalizations, in order to sell her celebrity and her literary products. That's Ann Coulter, of course.
I was going to respond to the first few paragraphs of Reagan's dribble (I refused to read the rest), starting with ” with all due respect to Michael Reagan.” But NO, this man doesn't deserve my respect , because, generally, respect is a mutual feeling.
When a man writes: “The difference between the two men was that my dad believed everything he said all the way to the core of his being, while Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats use speeches to mask what they really believe.” this man is actually calling Obama and Democrats liars and hypocrites–a statement not worthy of my respect nor of any other response.