Some Questions Answered Posted by Heather Hurlburt

In addition to being a beautifully-written speech, President Obama's Inaugural Address answered -- pretty definitively -- some questions people have been asking about his view of the world for a while now.

No Turning Inward.  Speechwriters watch order and length of a speech to gauge priorities.  Obama did domestic priorities first -- what you'd expect given the economic crisis --  but by my unscientific count there was more time given to international concerns, something unprecedented in a first Inaugural in recent times. 

Leadership.  Obama gave a thundering endorsement to the renewal of US global leadership and, while avoiding words like "indispensable," pledged that the US would "play its role," a role he suggested was unique and derived from our multicultural history.

A broadened view of what security and US interests entail.  The seamless flow of the national security section from leadership to democracy to terrorism to poverty to the strength of multiculturalism was an eloquent expression of a worldview that sees the connections among those issues, in contrast to one that sees military security first.  The speech put forward a comprehensive, integrated view without using catchphrases like "Toolbox" or (sorry, David) "integrated power" or "soft power."  But every viewer understood that Obama was considering those issues together in an integrated framework.

Outreach to the Islamic world.  My prediction that the Islamic world would not get more than a line in the speech stands -- it got exactly one.  I have also predicted that it may not prove possible, especially given Gaza, to give a speech in the first 100 days focused specifically on the Islamic world. But the speech as a whole stands as a downpayment -- modest but not insignificant -- which is exactly what's wanted.

Forceful on terrorism.  In case you were still thinking the Pakistan and other terrorism rhetoric was a campaign artifact, forget it.  This is who Obama is.

Firm on human rights.  In the same vein, there's been some anxiety about whether Obama would stick to his campaign rhetoric on human and civil rights.  The "false choice" rhetoric was a clear signal here, too, that this is who the man is -- and this is what he thinks the struggle against terrorists looks like.  Which doesn't mean the next phase is easy.  but still.

Will He Use His Personal Story to Explain America to the World?  Yes.  Hallelujah.

Comments

[Don Bacon]

"US global leadership" seems to working -- major stock markets are tanking all over the world. But will the losers be grateful?

[Zathras]

Three interesting components in Obama's speech:

Two were early references to a "collective failure to make hard choices" and "putting off unpleasant decisions." To what were these intended to allude? In principle, everyone agrees that we can't expect to address large and difficult problems only with popular measures. In practice, no one is willing to act on this belief. I'm thinking of "magic energy beans" in particular -- the idea that subsidies and regulation can bring into being vast new sources of cheap, clean energy from non-fossil sources without the use of taxation to raise the price of energy derived from fossil fuel -- since Obama dwelt heavily on an MEB-centric energy policy during the campaign. One can look at other policy areas and see the same general weakness of celebrating tough decisions in principle and shunning them in practice. So what did Obama mean by his twin references? We'll see.

The other notable thing was his paragraph toward the end of the speech about "those values upon which our success depends" that describes those values as a product of the American past. After literally years of rhetoric about "change," Obama here hints at a theme of restoration. He might have done more than hint; most Americans think the country has gotten off on the wrong track, not that it was never on the right track to begin with. We may hear this theme again.

Incidentally, the lead-in to the quote from Washington -- one of the speech's better moments -- was marred by some uncharacteristic carelessness on the part of either Obama or his speechwriting team. In December of 1776 the American capital at the time, Philadelphia, was not abandoned (it was occupied later in the war by the British) and the British/Hessian army was not advancing (it had gone into winter quarters, as Washington's army might also have done had it not been for the imminent expiration of so many enlistments). These mistakes were not central to Obama's message and might easily have been avoided.

[Don Bacon]

Barack Obama has been a Ronald Reagan admirer.

Obama: "I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing."

[Dan Kervick]

I thought the speech was too heavy on conservative themes: responsibility, stolid and hard-headed virtue and fidelity to the past. Obama presented himself as conservative guardian of traditional American values such as industry and hard work; personal and civic responsibility; obligations of fealty to those who have come before us and sacrificed for our benefit; the necessity of public and personal virtue and good habits; temperance and sobriety; modesty in the pursuits of leisure, fame and riches; humility; restraint; thrift and frugality. He sounded like Ben Franklin.

What was missing was the hopeful and optimistic counterpoint. There was too much wallowing in crisis and the "depths of winter". A lot of talk of "gathering clouds" and "raging storms" and the "sapping of confidence" and "nagging fear" (malaise?). There was also plenty of fear mongering about the two wars and the economic slowdown, and even a wholly gratuitous, Bush-style conjuring of GWOT misery with the reference to the "far-reaching network of violence and hatred" - something that hasn't really been a significant element of Obama's message before. The hopeful notes in the speech were very restrained and vague. The message seemed to be only that if we buck up, dust ourselves off, step out on to the "long rugged path" that is "not for the faint-hearted", and start working together in a dogged spirit of personal and civic responsibility, we can at least man the levies and prevent the worst, and then dig out.

But where was the "hope" for anything other than national continuity and survival? Where was the vision of a brighter day, and a sketch of what that day will look like? We were told we are on a national "journey". But where is that journey headed? Is it a journey to a cool and fun and possibly exciting place, or just a place where there is at least no catastrophic depression? The future was left shrouded in mystery. And as the speech sinks into today, I'm finding it to be a bit of a downer.

I know the economy sucks. I come into work every day and read about layoffs in my industry, and sometimes in my own company. A couple of friends were just laid off on Monday. Frankly, I was hoping for a bit of a pep talk, not a hectoring Protestant sermon about the stony path through the veil of tears.

[Don Bacon]

Obama: "Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction. This is the journey we continue today. . .Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America."

The American people need to "begin again the work." It's sooo difficult to begin work when you've lost your job. (One "good" thing, military recruitment to fill Obama's expanded military is up.) But what has brought America to where it is?

Obama: "On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics."

Oh, it's not Bush -- "I thank President Bush for his service to our nation" -- and it's not the subversion of Americans' interests for health care, education, jobs and peace to the corruption in Washington, no, it's "petty grievances and false promises."

Say what??

[Don Bacon]

Obama: "Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America."

In the 1936 film. Fred Astair and Ginger Rogers sing a duet called "Pick Myself Up," with the lines, "Nothing's impossible I have found/ For when my chin is on the ground/ I pick myself up/ Dust myself off/ And start all over again." The lyrics were written by Dorothy Fields and the music by Jerome Kern.

But Dan would rather hear:

Happy days are here again
The skies above are clear again
So let's sing a song of cheer again
Happy days are here again

There are a lot of other good depression-era songs, too, that might yet come in handy. So let's walk on the sunny side of the street!

[Dan Kervick]

Don, I think if Obama is going to tell us all to work hard to remake America, he should say just a little bit more about what we are supposed to remake it into.

Success in every venture is enhanced by visualization. I take it that Obama wants to work for a future filled with new green technologies, a healthier and more beautiful environment, a radically transformed energy system, better schools and health care, and a more peaceful and progressively governed world. He should have taken some time to paint a vibrant and inspiring picture of what that future looks like. Then the people he is exhorting to work hard to build it could say, "Cool, let's go."

Happy days clearly aren't here again. But I'm not whining and wallowing in the dust. Neither are my co-workers. We wake up every day and go to work. We don't need to dust ourselves off. We just need leaders with a clearer vision and better sense of direction.

[Don Bacon]

Dan,
I know. I'm kind of in a funk expecting, apparently, more than I'm entitled to expect and I take it out on you of all people. Sorry.

It's not entirely my fault. We were promised change and what we're getting are some new spending programs plastered over existing war and corruption. Obama's appointments and his words have in fact been "heavy on conservative themes" and focused on the FDR theme of wartime sacrifice and not on fundamental change, when in fact the US created the wartime. Apparently the problems are all our fault and we need to pick ourselves up by the bootstraps, or some such tripe.

The corporate lobbyists must love it, and in fact Obama has gotten high marks from the far right.

We both know that there are some basic structural problems in our society (particularly politics) and they aren't being addressed, or even recognized. I should've known better, but I had the audacity of hope. Let's see what the new decider will decide next.