Impulse

As thousands huddled in winter coats & hats in D.C. yesterday morning, I shivered in layers of blankets in my living room (no, it wasn’t an act of solidarity—my heat’s been out for a week), glued to the TV to watch Senator Obama become President Obama.  It was a great moment that I’d been looking forward to for a long time—especially the inaugural address.  I’ve long been a fan of great oratory and had high hopes for this speech from an excellent orator on a momentous, long awaited day. 

I was a little disappointed.  It was a scattershot speech.  He was solid on each of the myriad points he made, but there was no overall message, no guiding principle that drove everything else.  It was an opportunity lost.  I think William Safire nailed it on NYTimes:

Our 44th president’s Inaugural Address was solid, respectable, uplifting, suitably short, superbly delivered, but — in light of the towering expectations whipped up that his speech might belong in the company of those by Lincoln, F.D.R. and Kennedy — fell short of the anticipated immortality.

[…]

A good speech has to have a memorable theme, stated early and reprised at the end. It did not emerge in this address.

To mobilize people to collective action, you have to have communicate a single guiding principle.  Taxation without representation; "Free at last"; man on the moon by the end of the decade—that sort of thing.  This not only gives people a framework for understanding your policy, but guides their own decisions.  It gets individuals excited because they understand how they can change things.  If anything, Obama’s campaign was about change and grass-roots action.  Having a guiding principle in the speech would have been a perfect method for launching grass-roots change in support of his policy.

Shisol was glad that "there was no swinging for the rhetorical fences".  I agree.  You win more baseball games by consistently hitting solid base hits than gambling on home runs.  Happily, Obama’s team demonstrates a lack of self-grandeur.  Still, you don’t have to have Lincoln-worthy rhetoric to ignite a movement. You just have to make a clear point.  If Obama had done that, I would’ve felt much, much more inspired by his speech, making me forget my unfair expectations of immortal oratory (my expectations are my mistake). 

All that said, I still can’t say the phrase "President Barack Obama" without a big ole satisfied grin spreading over my face.