Betsy's Page

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Trying to get beyond the tropes

If I were a conservative politician, or if I were John McCain (these are not the same), I would hire Andrew Ferguson either as a speech writer or to edit speeches. I find that he has done the best job out there analyzing the rhetorical weaknesses of Obama's speeches. If I were giving big political speeches, I could a lot worse than to turn them over to Ferguson to take his red pen through some of the more overblown fourishes and logical fallacies.

Today he looks at Obama's Berlin speech, surely the most overhyped speech since Obama's race speech. He points out that the coverage of the speech was a lot more interested in the setting - the throngs of cheering Germans and the beautiful theatrics of the venue rather than the actual content of the speech. That's because, as for so many of Obama's speeches, the content is vacuous and unimportant.
So if "standing as one" didn't win the Cold War, what did? Obama didn't stop to answer, since his own reading of history seems to deny the premise of the question. Instead he hustled on to the present moment. Now, he said, "we are called upon again." To do what? Presumably to stand as one all over again, in the face of "new promise and new peril." Included in the latter are terrorism, global warming, and nuclear proliferation. But those perils aren't the worst of it. "The greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another."

The sentence is the heart of the speech and an instance of Obama's big weakness--his preference for the rhetorical flourish over a realistic account of things as they are. Most politicians share the weakness, and the preference has proved wildly attractive to Obama's supporters. But think it through: "New walls to divide us" is just a metaphor, a trope. A trope can't be the "greatest danger of all." A terrorist setting off a nuclear bomb in London--that's a danger. A revolution in Islamabad--that's a danger. A figure of speech is just a figure of speech.

And what will Obama have us do to avoid those nonmetaphorical dangers? He declined to get specific, aside from urging us to "answer the call." Floating along on a cloud of metaphor and generality allows Obama to do what he wants to do, in the Berlin speech and elsewhere. As a public figure he means to rise above any hint of conflict, and to suggest that problems and dangers dissolve when we "come together." And coming together, "standing as one," is simply the logical outcome of every participant's correctly understanding his best interest. What could be more reasonable?
Ferguson is right that this is the heart of Obama's appeal. He's a post-racial, post-partisan, post-national "Citizen of the world" rock star. He seems tempermentally inclined to the sort of on one hand, on the other hand, sort of analysis that tries to explain everyone's beliefs as if understanding both sides was a replacement for ideology. How that accords with the man who listened to Jeremiah Wright for twenty years and adapted Wright's sermons for his own "Audacity of Hope" approach is a question left unanswered and, for the MSM, unasked.

And then Ferguson puts his fingers on what I was trying to express in my take on Obama's speech. For all the supposed urgency of repeating "this is our moment," Obama isn't really calling on us to do anything specific just to stand together as one to do...what? Apparently, just feeling unity with the world, even if we are really just as divided on how to attack big problems as if we weren't all supposedly post-national now is enough.
It doesn't matter that human affairs never work out this way, no more in domestic politics than in foreign policy. The assumption that they do is what lends so many of Obama's utterances their greeting-card simplicity and appeal. The effect is almost soporific: "America cannot turn inward," he says. Check. "Now is the time to build new bridges." All set to go. "We must defeat terror." True dat. "Every nation in Europe must have the chance to choose its own tomorrow free from the shadows of yesterday." Roger. "We must help answer the call for a new dawn in the Middle East." Go ahead: Argue.

To pump a little vigor into his limp sentiments, Obama attached them to a hypnotic refrain. "This is the moment," he said in Berlin, repeatedly. But where's the urgency come from? What's the rush? In the long train of platitudes he suggested no discrete, definable policy that needed to be adopted urgently, beyond his call to unity, which isn't a policy but an aspiration. You get the idea that the urgency doesn't arise from an assessment of reality but from a rhetorical need. He's got to keep the folks on their toes somehow.

Obama couldn't come to Berlin and deliver a speech full of portent, as Reagan and Kennedy did before him, and as his publicists suggested he might. For all the talk about this being our time and us being the people, Obama shows no sign of really believing we live in portentous times.
But, hey! Who needs portentous times when you have mastered the metaphors and tropes and the right pictures.

This isn't to say that John McCain is any great speechmaker. I thought his recent speech to the GI Forum was well done, for all the good that that is going to do for him. But the matching interviews that he got this week as the MSM tried to make it look like they were giving him equal time yielded up a share of McCain blunders that make him look like he's starting to fumble away some of his supposed advantage on foreign policy.

Since I tend not to swoon for politicians, I make my decisions on the one whom I dislike the least. If I'm lucky there will be a few things I like about a few areas where I agree with that candidate and that's the most I've come to expect. This year John McCain is that guy. The difference this year is that there are voters out there in full swoon mode. Many of them are in the media. So that's why I'm continually amazed at how baseless seems the slackjawed admiration for Obama. It's like watching American Idol and being amazed when the public sends home the better singer in favor of the teenie bopper kid. I just keep hoping, perhaps futilely, that enough people will shake their heads clear of the puffy clouds and rainbows and realize that we need more in a president than someone who looks pretty and appeals to some people's aspirations for that post-partisan and post-national world that doesn't exist.
Labels: Obama

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 1:22 PM 0 comments

Comments:

If I were a conservative politician, or if I were John McCain (these are not the same), I would hire Andrew Ferguson either as a speech writer or to edit speeches. I find that he has done the best job out there analyzing the rhetorical weaknesses of Obama's speeches. If I were giving big political speeches, I could a lot worse than to turn them over to Ferguson to take his red pen through some of the more overblown fourishes and logical fallacies.

Today he looks at Obama's Berlin speech, surely the most overhyped speech since Obama's race speech. He points out that the coverage of the speech was a lot more interested in the setting - the throngs of cheering Germans and the beautiful theatrics of the venue rather than the actual content of the speech. That's because, as for so many of Obama's speeches, the content is vacuous and unimportant.

So if "standing as one" didn't win the Cold War, what did? Obama didn't stop to answer, since his own reading of history seems to deny the premise of the question. Instead he hustled on to the present moment. Now, he said, "we are called upon again." To do what? Presumably to stand as one all over again, in the face of "new promise and new peril." Included in the latter are terrorism, global warming, and nuclear proliferation. But those perils aren't the worst of it. "The greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another."

The sentence is the heart of the speech and an instance of Obama's big weakness--his preference for the rhetorical flourish over a realistic account of things as they are. Most politicians share the weakness, and the preference has proved wildly attractive to Obama's supporters. But think it through: "New walls to divide us" is just a metaphor, a trope. A trope can't be the "greatest danger of all." A terrorist setting off a nuclear bomb in London--that's a danger. A revolution in Islamabad--that's a danger. A figure of speech is just a figure of speech.

And what will Obama have us do to avoid those nonmetaphorical dangers? He declined to get specific, aside from urging us to "answer the call." Floating along on a cloud of metaphor and generality allows Obama to do what he wants to do, in the Berlin speech and elsewhere. As a public figure he means to rise above any hint of conflict, and to suggest that problems and dangers dissolve when we "come together." And coming together, "standing as one," is simply the logical outcome of every participant's correctly understanding his best interest. What could be more reasonable?

Ferguson is right that this is the heart of Obama's appeal. He's a post-racial, post-partisan, post-national "Citizen of the world" rock star. He seems tempermentally inclined to the sort of on one hand, on the other hand, sort of analysis that tries to explain everyone's beliefs as if understanding both sides was a replacement for ideology. How that accords with the man who listened to Jeremiah Wright for twenty years and adapted Wright's sermons for his own "Audacity of Hope" approach is a question left unanswered and, for the MSM, unasked.

And then Ferguson puts his fingers on what I was trying to express in my take on Obama's speech. For all the supposed urgency of repeating "this is our moment," Obama isn't really calling on us to do anything specific just to stand together as one to do...what? Apparently, just feeling unity with the world, even if we are really just as divided on how to attack big problems as if we weren't all supposedly post-national now is enough.

It doesn't matter that human affairs never work out this way, no more in domestic politics than in foreign policy. The assumption that they do is what lends so many of Obama's utterances their greeting-card simplicity and appeal. The effect is almost soporific: "America cannot turn inward," he says. Check. "Now is the time to build new bridges." All set to go. "We must defeat terror." True dat. "Every nation in Europe must have the chance to choose its own tomorrow free from the shadows of yesterday." Roger. "We must help answer the call for a new dawn in the Middle East." Go ahead: Argue.

To pump a little vigor into his limp sentiments, Obama attached them to a hypnotic refrain. "This is the moment," he said in Berlin, repeatedly. But where's the urgency come from? What's the rush? In the long train of platitudes he suggested no discrete, definable policy that needed to be adopted urgently, beyond his call to unity, which isn't a policy but an aspiration. You get the idea that the urgency doesn't arise from an assessment of reality but from a rhetorical need. He's got to keep the folks on their toes somehow.

Obama couldn't come to Berlin and deliver a speech full of portent, as Reagan and Kennedy did before him, and as his publicists suggested he might. For all the talk about this being our time and us being the people, Obama shows no sign of really believing we live in portentous times.

But, hey! Who needs portentous times when you have mastered the metaphors and tropes and the right pictures.

This isn't to say that John McCain is any great speechmaker. I thought his recent speech to the GI Forum was well done, for all the good that that is going to do for him. But the matching interviews that he got this week as the MSM tried to make it look like they were giving him equal time yielded up a share of McCain blunders that make him look like he's starting to fumble away some of his supposed advantage on foreign policy.

Since I tend not to swoon for politicians, I make my decisions on the one whom I dislike the least. If I'm lucky there will be a few things I like about a few areas where I agree with that candidate and that's the most I've come to expect. This year John McCain is that guy. The difference this year is that there are voters out there in full swoon mode. Many of them are in the media. So that's why I'm continually amazed at how baseless seems the slackjawed admiration for Obama. It's like watching American Idol and being amazed when the public sends home the better singer in favor of the teenie bopper kid. I just keep hoping, perhaps futilely, that enough people will shake their heads clear of the puffy clouds and rainbows and realize that we need more in a president than someone who looks pretty and appeals to some people's aspirations for that post-partisan and post-national world that doesn't exist.

Labels: Obama

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 1:22 PM 0 comments

Comments: Post a Comment

The truth about Avesil

Cheap Hosting

Atlanta Bankruptcy Attorney

Dallas Bankruptcy Attorney

Wikio

Get exclusive travel deals and book discount cheap flights

Online Bachelors Degree

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Trying to get beyond the tropes

		Betsy's Page

HOME Betsy neither necessarily uses, nor endorses, the products advertised on this site. The truth about Avesil Cheap Hosting Atlanta Bankruptcy Attorney Dallas Bankruptcy Attorney Wikio Get exclusive travel deals and book discount cheap flights Online Bachelors Degree Comments from an AP history and government teacher in Raleigh, NC. e-mail betsynewmark AT gmail.com Commissions earned from selling items through Amazon will go towards buying materials for my classes. Thank you. Site Feed		Sunday, July 27, 2008 Trying to get beyond the tropes If I were a conservative politician, or if I were John McCain (these are not the same), I would hire Andrew Ferguson either as a speech writer or to edit speeches. I find that he has done the best job out there analyzing the rhetorical weaknesses of Obama's speeches. If I were giving big political speeches, I could a lot worse than to turn them over to Ferguson to take his red pen through some of the more overblown fourishes and logical fallacies. Today he looks at Obama's Berlin speech, surely the most overhyped speech since Obama's race speech. He points out that the coverage of the speech was a lot more interested in the setting - the throngs of cheering Germans and the beautiful theatrics of the venue rather than the actual content of the speech. That's because, as for so many of Obama's speeches, the content is vacuous and unimportant. So if "standing as one" didn't win the Cold War, what did? Obama didn't stop to answer, since his own reading of history seems to deny the premise of the question. Instead he hustled on to the present moment. Now, he said, "we are called upon again." To do what? Presumably to stand as one all over again, in the face of "new promise and new peril." Included in the latter are terrorism, global warming, and nuclear proliferation. But those perils aren't the worst of it. "The greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another." The sentence is the heart of the speech and an instance of Obama's big weakness--his preference for the rhetorical flourish over a realistic account of things as they are. Most politicians share the weakness, and the preference has proved wildly attractive to Obama's supporters. But think it through: "New walls to divide us" is just a metaphor, a trope. A trope can't be the "greatest danger of all." A terrorist setting off a nuclear bomb in London--that's a danger. A revolution in Islamabad--that's a danger. A figure of speech is just a figure of speech. And what will Obama have us do to avoid those nonmetaphorical dangers? He declined to get specific, aside from urging us to "answer the call." Floating along on a cloud of metaphor and generality allows Obama to do what he wants to do, in the Berlin speech and elsewhere. As a public figure he means to rise above any hint of conflict, and to suggest that problems and dangers dissolve when we "come together." And coming together, "standing as one," is simply the logical outcome of every participant's correctly understanding his best interest. What could be more reasonable? Ferguson is right that this is the heart of Obama's appeal. He's a post-racial, post-partisan, post-national "Citizen of the world" rock star. He seems tempermentally inclined to the sort of on one hand, on the other hand, sort of analysis that tries to explain everyone's beliefs as if understanding both sides was a replacement for ideology. How that accords with the man who listened to Jeremiah Wright for twenty years and adapted Wright's sermons for his own "Audacity of Hope" approach is a question left unanswered and, for the MSM, unasked. And then Ferguson puts his fingers on what I was trying to express in my take on Obama's speech. For all the supposed urgency of repeating "this is our moment," Obama isn't really calling on us to do anything specific just to stand together as one to do...what? Apparently, just feeling unity with the world, even if we are really just as divided on how to attack big problems as if we weren't all supposedly post-national now is enough. It doesn't matter that human affairs never work out this way, no more in domestic politics than in foreign policy. The assumption that they do is what lends so many of Obama's utterances their greeting-card simplicity and appeal. The effect is almost soporific: "America cannot turn inward," he says. Check. "Now is the time to build new bridges." All set to go. "We must defeat terror." True dat. "Every nation in Europe must have the chance to choose its own tomorrow free from the shadows of yesterday." Roger. "We must help answer the call for a new dawn in the Middle East." Go ahead: Argue. To pump a little vigor into his limp sentiments, Obama attached them to a hypnotic refrain. "This is the moment," he said in Berlin, repeatedly. But where's the urgency come from? What's the rush? In the long train of platitudes he suggested no discrete, definable policy that needed to be adopted urgently, beyond his call to unity, which isn't a policy but an aspiration. You get the idea that the urgency doesn't arise from an assessment of reality but from a rhetorical need. He's got to keep the folks on their toes somehow. Obama couldn't come to Berlin and deliver a speech full of portent, as Reagan and Kennedy did before him, and as his publicists suggested he might. For all the talk about this being our time and us being the people, Obama shows no sign of really believing we live in portentous times. But, hey! Who needs portentous times when you have mastered the metaphors and tropes and the right pictures. This isn't to say that John McCain is any great speechmaker. I thought his recent speech to the GI Forum was well done, for all the good that that is going to do for him. But the matching interviews that he got this week as the MSM tried to make it look like they were giving him equal time yielded up a share of McCain blunders that make him look like he's starting to fumble away some of his supposed advantage on foreign policy. Since I tend not to swoon for politicians, I make my decisions on the one whom I dislike the least. If I'm lucky there will be a few things I like about a few areas where I agree with that candidate and that's the most I've come to expect. This year John McCain is that guy. The difference this year is that there are voters out there in full swoon mode. Many of them are in the media. So that's why I'm continually amazed at how baseless seems the slackjawed admiration for Obama. It's like watching American Idol and being amazed when the public sends home the better singer in favor of the teenie bopper kid. I just keep hoping, perhaps futilely, that enough people will shake their heads clear of the puffy clouds and rainbows and realize that we need more in a president than someone who looks pretty and appeals to some people's aspirations for that post-partisan and post-national world that doesn't exist. Labels: Obama posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 1:22 PM 0 comments Comments: If I were a conservative politician, or if I were John McCain (these are not the same), I would hire Andrew Ferguson either as a speech writer or to edit speeches. I find that he has done the best job out there analyzing the rhetorical weaknesses of Obama's speeches. If I were giving big political speeches, I could a lot worse than to turn them over to Ferguson to take his red pen through some of the more overblown fourishes and logical fallacies. Today he looks at Obama's Berlin speech, surely the most overhyped speech since Obama's race speech. He points out that the coverage of the speech was a lot more interested in the setting - the throngs of cheering Germans and the beautiful theatrics of the venue rather than the actual content of the speech. That's because, as for so many of Obama's speeches, the content is vacuous and unimportant. So if "standing as one" didn't win the Cold War, what did? Obama didn't stop to answer, since his own reading of history seems to deny the premise of the question. Instead he hustled on to the present moment. Now, he said, "we are called upon again." To do what? Presumably to stand as one all over again, in the face of "new promise and new peril." Included in the latter are terrorism, global warming, and nuclear proliferation. But those perils aren't the worst of it. "The greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another." The sentence is the heart of the speech and an instance of Obama's big weakness--his preference for the rhetorical flourish over a realistic account of things as they are. Most politicians share the weakness, and the preference has proved wildly attractive to Obama's supporters. But think it through: "New walls to divide us" is just a metaphor, a trope. A trope can't be the "greatest danger of all." A terrorist setting off a nuclear bomb in London--that's a danger. A revolution in Islamabad--that's a danger. A figure of speech is just a figure of speech. And what will Obama have us do to avoid those nonmetaphorical dangers? He declined to get specific, aside from urging us to "answer the call." Floating along on a cloud of metaphor and generality allows Obama to do what he wants to do, in the Berlin speech and elsewhere. As a public figure he means to rise above any hint of conflict, and to suggest that problems and dangers dissolve when we "come together." And coming together, "standing as one," is simply the logical outcome of every participant's correctly understanding his best interest. What could be more reasonable? Ferguson is right that this is the heart of Obama's appeal. He's a post-racial, post-partisan, post-national "Citizen of the world" rock star. He seems tempermentally inclined to the sort of on one hand, on the other hand, sort of analysis that tries to explain everyone's beliefs as if understanding both sides was a replacement for ideology. How that accords with the man who listened to Jeremiah Wright for twenty years and adapted Wright's sermons for his own "Audacity of Hope" approach is a question left unanswered and, for the MSM, unasked. And then Ferguson puts his fingers on what I was trying to express in my take on Obama's speech. For all the supposed urgency of repeating "this is our moment," Obama isn't really calling on us to do anything specific just to stand together as one to do...what? Apparently, just feeling unity with the world, even if we are really just as divided on how to attack big problems as if we weren't all supposedly post-national now is enough. It doesn't matter that human affairs never work out this way, no more in domestic politics than in foreign policy. The assumption that they do is what lends so many of Obama's utterances their greeting-card simplicity and appeal. The effect is almost soporific: "America cannot turn inward," he says. Check. "Now is the time to build new bridges." All set to go. "We must defeat terror." True dat. "Every nation in Europe must have the chance to choose its own tomorrow free from the shadows of yesterday." Roger. "We must help answer the call for a new dawn in the Middle East." Go ahead: Argue. To pump a little vigor into his limp sentiments, Obama attached them to a hypnotic refrain. "This is the moment," he said in Berlin, repeatedly. But where's the urgency come from? What's the rush? In the long train of platitudes he suggested no discrete, definable policy that needed to be adopted urgently, beyond his call to unity, which isn't a policy but an aspiration. You get the idea that the urgency doesn't arise from an assessment of reality but from a rhetorical need. He's got to keep the folks on their toes somehow. Obama couldn't come to Berlin and deliver a speech full of portent, as Reagan and Kennedy did before him, and as his publicists suggested he might. For all the talk about this being our time and us being the people, Obama shows no sign of really believing we live in portentous times. But, hey! Who needs portentous times when you have mastered the metaphors and tropes and the right pictures. This isn't to say that John McCain is any great speechmaker. I thought his recent speech to the GI Forum was well done, for all the good that that is going to do for him. But the matching interviews that he got this week as the MSM tried to make it look like they were giving him equal time yielded up a share of McCain blunders that make him look like he's starting to fumble away some of his supposed advantage on foreign policy. Since I tend not to swoon for politicians, I make my decisions on the one whom I dislike the least. If I'm lucky there will be a few things I like about a few areas where I agree with that candidate and that's the most I've come to expect. This year John McCain is that guy. The difference this year is that there are voters out there in full swoon mode. Many of them are in the media. So that's why I'm continually amazed at how baseless seems the slackjawed admiration for Obama. It's like watching American Idol and being amazed when the public sends home the better singer in favor of the teenie bopper kid. I just keep hoping, perhaps futilely, that enough people will shake their heads clear of the puffy clouds and rainbows and realize that we need more in a president than someone who looks pretty and appeals to some people's aspirations for that post-partisan and post-national world that doesn't exist. Labels: Obama posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 1:22 PM 0 comments Comments: Post a Comment